Creative Director

Creative Director (Design)

We're looking for a sharp, ambitious creative ready to take their next big step. As Creative Director (Design) at EF Educational Tours, you'll be a hands-on force in shaping the visual identity and creative output of two beloved student travel brands — EF Explore America and EF Educational Tours. This isn't a role where you manage from a distance. You'll be in it: concepting, crafting, and setting the creative pace for the team around you.

You're a digital native who can move easily between mediums — web, social, email, and print included. You're excited to explore how AI can enhance departmental efficiency and unlock even more space for human creativity. You'll partner closely with our Creative Director (Content) to help the team bring ideas to life that show the real, lasting impact travel has on students, teachers, families, and communities.

You're a strategist who knows how to take a brief, find the story, and transform it into something people actually feel. You thrive in scrappy, fast-moving environments where your fingerprints are all over the work and you're proud of that. All candidates must submit a portfolio to be considered.

In this role, you will:

• Lead by doing: Carry the creative vision with confidence while staying deeply embedded in the work itself — designing, reviewing, and raising the bar through your own output.
• Shape the brand: Drive the evolution of our visual system across channels with intention, craft, and consistency, always ensuring every touchpoint reflects who we are and where we're going.
• Translate strategy into creative: Partner with stakeholders across Sales, Product and Service to take a strategic brief and turn it into bold, measurable creative work. You're comfortable in the room with senior leaders and know how to present ideas with conviction.
• Champion fresh thinking: Stay ahead of digital trends, emerging tools, and cultural moments to keep our creative output sharp, relevant, and distinctly ours.
• Mentor and elevate: Be a genuine leader to the design team. Be someone who invests in their growth, gives real feedback, and builds a culture of curiosity and high craft. You've led people before and are the person that people naturally turn to.
• Execute with care: Oversee campaign and promotional materials like print, digital, social, and beyond with a close eye on quality and deadlines.
• Spread the word: Champion the value of smart, intentional creative across the organization — in small team settings and larger forums alike.

You are:

• Hungry and ready: You have 12 to 15 years of design experience with demonstrated success with leading or mentoring others — and you're excited to grow that part of your career.
• Digitally fluent: You think digital-first. You understand how creative performs across platforms, and you design with that in mind.
• Results-driven: You have a jaw-dropping portfolio showing your ability to connect creative work to real results that drive business impact.
• A strong communicator and collaborator: You work well with others, communicate your ideas clearly, and know how to bring stakeholders along on a creative journey.
• Plugged in: You have what we like to call fingerspitzengefühl — you keep your finger on the pulse of visual communication trends, emerging technologies, and what's next in digital creative.

Why you'll love working here: Perks, Benefits, and more!

This is the most fun, high caliber place you'll ever work. Ask any employee why they love EF (whether they've been here 10 minutes or 10 years) and they'll probably tell you the same thing: it's the people. When you work at EF, you join a purpose-driven, international and energetic community that thrives on continuous learning, fearless innovation and mutual support.

In addition, you can expect:

• Commitment to professional growth: robust monthly calendar of trainings and workshops
• Four weeks paid vacation your first year, ten paid holidays, and two floating holidays
• Exciting business travel opportunities
• 25% company match on your 401(k) contributions
• Market-leading medical, dental and vision coverage, along with options for life and disability insurance, accident and hospital insurance, legal and pet insurance
• Dependent care, healthcare and commuter Flex Spending Accounts (FSAs)
• Access to fertility care and family-building support
• Wellness benefits including a yearly fitness reimbursement
• Frequent social and learning events, including access to our employee-run resource groups
• Robust Employee Assistance Program
• Tenure-based sabbatical eligibility
• EF Product Discounts (discounts on travel, international language schools, Au Pair program and more)
• Discounts at local venues and businesses
• Amazing offices designed to match the caliber of the people who work there, plus the flexibility of working from home one day a week.
• Compensation range for this role is $125,000-$160,000/year, based on experience.

About Us

Some companies are in the business of banking. Others are in the business of shoes. Or sports. Or soft drinks. At EF, we're in a different kind of business. One that's a little less tangible, and a lot more important. Because our business, what we make, makes everything else possible. We're in the business of understanding. Between people. Between cultures. For over half a century we've been the leader in international educational programs and experiences designed to foster such understanding. Through language, cultural exchange, academic studies, and educational travel, we create the kinds of immersive experiences that challenge biases, open minds, and pave the way for a more understanding world. You'll find our offices and schools located in some of the world's greatest cities, and filled with smart, driven people (over 50,000 of us) who push each other to be better every day. But it's what we do together - building greater understanding, breaking down barriers, and creating a better world - that makes all the difference. Founded in 1965 in Sweden, EF (Education First) is a global association of education companies that share a common mission of opening the world through education. EF has been recognized on Forbes 2025 and 2024 World's Best Employers and 2024 Top Companies for Women lists, Fast Company's 2025 Next Big Things In Tech, and was a 2024 App Store Award winner in Cultural Impact.

About the Team

EF Educational Tours teams up with educators to take students beyond the classroom on immersive international travel programs. We deliver educational experiences powered by a proven learning method that's designed to build essential skills, like curiosity and communication. Our tours are where learning meets life—they give students firsthand experience of the world, and unlock the type of personal growth that prepares them for their futures.