Executive Creative Director, Design

Recognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com® has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com® not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions.

Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance.

Realtor.com® is hiring an Executive Creative Director (Design) to lead the visual identity of one of the most consequential brands in American life — the place millions turn when they're navigating the biggest financial and emotional decision they'll ever make.

You'll set the creative vision for the brand's visual expression and the team's craft trajectory. You'll lead design and art direction across 15+ integrated campaigns a year, spanning consumer and client audiences across paid, owned, and earned channels. You'll be the senior visual voice on our flagship celebrity platform with Reba McEntire, and you'll set the standard for the everyday work that compounds into a brand the category can't ignore.

The Bureau is our in-house brand and creative organization — talented, proud, and deeply rooted in understanding our audiences. The team you're inheriting is ready for a leader who inspires, coaches, and organizes them to make the leap from strong work to category-defining work. You're a working creative lead, still in the craft, still the person the room looks to when the idea needs to get sharper. You’re also the person setting the standard for how AI makes the team's work better, not just faster.

Why Now: 

The brand has earned the right to swing big with recent campaigns. Nearly Home with Reba McEntire became an Effie Finalist in its first year. Mission Zero gave the brand a purpose platform with real cultural weight. The work is landing. The category is paying attention. The team is hungry to do more.

In the last twelve months we've expanded The Bureau's remit to own both consumer and client brand under one creative roof, and the Austin-based design and copy bench has grown alongside teammates who've shaped this brand for 10+ years. The platforms are working. The operating system is evolving. We need to accelerate the visual craft of this brand.

The Agency You’ll Lead:

The Bureau handles the full production spectrum: broadcast and online video, display and digital takeovers, OOH, print, audio, experiential, B2B campaigns, social, and CRM. You'll have the latitude to bring in collaborators you've worked with and expand the agency and production ecosystem The Bureau works with. You'll lead a team of 10+ including full-time and contract talent, supported by dedicated Program Managers and Brand Operations. Your peers and teammates are a creative partner in Copy, and senior partners on both the consumer and client sides of the brand spanning activation, stakeholder management, and brand strategy. You'll operate as the senior creative voice across both business lines.

What You'll Do:

Set the Creative Standard:

• Own the visual ambition and creative standard for everything The Bureau produces: consumer brand, client brand, product marketing, CRM, social, audio, experiential, and corporate communication.
• Champion big idea platforms with multi-year legs. Hold a high bar on briefs, production, and the visual language that carries the brand across every touchpoint. Be the creative voice the organization and its agency partners look to — the person who defines what great looks like and defends it.

Lead the Flagship Platform:

• Serve as the senior creative voice on Nearly Home with Reba McEntire — stewarding the visual craft across every surface The Bureau owns and evolving the platform as it extends into new channels and cultural moments.
• Build on the Effie Finalist foundation. Hold the standard that makes the platform defensible, distinctive, and durable.

Drive Retail Creative Discipline:

• Bring a retail creative mindset to a national brand platform — producing work that creates urgency, responds to market conditions, and stays reactive to rate cycles, seasonal inventory shifts, and cultural moments in real estate.
• Hold the brand standard without sacrificing speed or relevance. Partner with brand strategy and performance marketing to keep creative ambition and business effectiveness aligned.

Drive AI-Enabled Craft:

• AI fluency is a core expectation. Set the vision for how tools like Gemini, Claude, and Figma MCP get integrated into the team's daily practice — expanding capacity, raising output quality, and freeing the team for the creative work that matters most.
• Model AI-augmented creative leadership. Partner with the VP, Brand & Creative and Senior Manager, Brand Operations to implement it across workflows and empower the Art Directors to push the practice forward.

Build and Develop the Team:

• Invest in the Art Directors and designers as the next generation of creative leadership — structured development, real feedback, and briefs that stretch their range.
• Build the kind of creative culture people fight to be part of: collaborative, generous, craft-obsessed, and unafraid of the swing.

Lead Agency and Production Relationships:

• Lead and evolve Realtor.com’s agency relationships as the senior creative authority in the room — including evaluating, evolving, or re-pitching the ecosystem when the work calls for it.
• Direct external directors, producers, and production houses as creative peers — with a point of view on casting, treatment, editorial, and final output.

Evolve the Creative Infrastructure: 

• Own the visual identity and brand design system — upgrading, implementing, and governing it at scale across consumer and client touchpoints.
• Redesign creative workflows as tools and technology evolve. Build systems that increase consistency, speed, and quality without flattening creative ambition.

How We Work:

We balance creativity and innovation on a foundation of in-person collaboration. For most roles, our employees work three or more days in our offices, where they have the opportunity to collaborate in-person, adding richness to our culture and knitting us closer together.

What You Bring:

• 12+ years of design and art direction experience across agency and in-house creative environments; 5+ years at the ECD, GCD, or senior CD level leading Art Directors and senior individual contributors.
• A portfolio of big idea platforms with multi-year legs — broadcast, digital, OOH, audio, and social — with craft excellence and business impact you can speak to.
• In-house creative leadership experience — current or prior. You know how to build a creative culture inside a company, not just inside an agency.
• Proven experience upgrading or implementing a full visual identity and brand design system at scale, and governing it across a complex organization.
• A track record of redesigning creative workflows as tools and technology have evolved — building better systems, not just adopting new software.
• A retail or marketplace creative sensibility — you know how to create urgency, stay reactive to market conditions, and hold the brand standard at speed.
• Proven creative range across commercial brand advertising and purpose-driven or cause-based work.
• Mastery of the fundamentals: art direction, typography, photography, visual identity, layout, and visual systems. Strong fluency in video, motion, audio, and experiential.
• Experience leading agency and production relationships as the senior creative authority — evaluating partners, directing treatments, holding the bar on final output.
• A sharp, practiced point of view on AI in creative practice — what it multiplies, how to integrate it, and how to make a team meaningfully better with it.
• Clear creative taste, strong opinions held loosely, and a generous instinct for developing the people around you.

What Success Looks Like:

Nearly Home keeps evolving with visual craft that builds on the Effie Finalist foundation and extends across new channels and cultural moments. Consumer and client campaigns share a coherent visual language while flexing for very different audiences. Your Art Directors and designers are growing into the next generation of creative leadership at Realtor.com®. AI is woven into how the Bureau works, freeing the team to spend meaningfully more time on concepting and creative strategy, with output quality moving up alongside throughput. The team is producing work they're proud of — and the industry is noticing.

Why This Role Matters:

Realtor.com® helps people find their way home. That's not small. The brand has earned attention, the team has earned trust, and the work is starting to land in ways that matter. This role is about taking all of that — the platforms, the people, the proof points — and making the leap from "brand on the rise" to the brand the category measures itself against.

If that sounds like the swing you've been waiting to take, we should talk.

 

How We Reward You:

Realtor.com® is committed to investing in the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families. Our benefits programs include, but are not limited to:

• Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage
• Family forming benefits
• 13 Paid Holidays
• Flexible Time Off
• 8 hours of paid Volunteer Time off
• Immediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company match
• Tuition Reimbursement program for degreed and non-degreed programs
• 1:1 personalized Financial Planning Sessions
• Student Debt Retirement Savings Match program
• Free snacks and refreshments in each office location

Do the best work of your life at Realtor.com®

Here, you’ll partner with a diverse team of experts as you use leading-edge tech to empower everyone to meet a crucial goal: finding their way home. And you’ll find your way home too. At Realtor.com®, you’ll bring your full self to work as you innovate with speed, serve our consumers, and champion your teammates. In return, we’ll provide you with a warm, welcoming, and inclusive culture; intellectual challenges; and the development opportunities you need to grow.

Diversity is important to us, therefore, Realtor.com® is an Equal Opportunity Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, Realtor.com® will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.