Principal Director, Creative Brand & Advertising

Redmond, WA (Unknown)

$166K/yr – $331K/yrSenior Level9+ years expFull time

Posted 3 weeks ago

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Job Summary

Own and scale the Global Creative team, setting vision, operating model, and end-to-end production across brand campaigns, while leading talent, stakeholder management, and responsible AI integration.

  • Define and champion the creative vision; Build and scale the team
  • Lead executive partnership and cross-functional alignment

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Creative Leadership & Creative Direction
  • Define and champion the creative vision for the Global Creative team, setting standards for quality, craft, innovation, and cultural relevance across all output
  • Build and scale the team from the ground up — establishing its operating model, team structure, culture, ways of working, and quality benchmarks
  • Serve as the senior creative voice in brand and advertising decisions, ensuring all work reflects Microsoft’s brand ambition and drives measurable business impact
  • Own end-to-end creative production across brand campaigns, advertising content, digital, social, video, and experiential touchpoints
  • Talent & People Leadership
  • Attract, hire, develop, and retain world-class creative talent — including creative directors, art directors, and writers
  • Build a team culture of creative excellence, psychological safety, inclusion, and continuous growth
  • Invest in the long-term development of your team, creating clear career paths and coaching
  • Stakeholder Management

Requirements

  • Master's Degree in design, marketing, advertising, communications, or related field AND 7+ years experience working in product or service design.
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in design, marketing, advertising, communications, or related field AND 9+ years experience working in product or service design.
  • OR equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years of people management experience.
  • Application must include a portfolio demonstrating breakthrough creative work across brand advertising, content, and digital — with clear evidence of range, craft, and impact at scale

Preferred

  • 12+ years of experience in creative leadership at an in-house creative organization, top-tier advertising agency, or comparable organization
  • 6+ years of demonstrated experience building and leading high-performing creative campaigns
  • Proven ability to build or significantly scale a creative organization, including operating model design, process development, and culture-building
  • Executive communication and influencing skills, with experience partnering effectively with senior marketing, brand, and business leaders
  • Deep understanding of the relationship between brand strategy and creative execution across integrated campaigns
  • Demonstrated experience integrating AI tools into creative workflows in a meaningful and responsible way
  • Background spanning both brand marketing and advertising creative disciplines
  • Experience managing hybrid internal/external creative team models alongside agency partners
  • Familiarity with large-scale global brand portfolios spanning consumer software, hardware, or cloud-connected products

Benefits

Microsoft logo

Microsoft

Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting in differences. Because impact matters. Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of approximately 228,000 passionate employees worldwide.

Founded in 1975
Redmond, Washington, US
237K employees (11,715 in marketing)

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
1.3B
Monthly Google Ads Budget
$5.2M
Traffic Source Mix
Search
33.6%
Direct
56.9%
Referral
7.3%
Social
0.4%
Paid
1.2%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~225.8K

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
6,377 (3% of company)
Median Career Experience
21 years
Median Tenure
14 years
Marketing Roles Posted (Last 30 Days)
45

Funding

Total Funding
$1M
Last Raise
$1M
Post IPO Equity, 3 years ago

Funding History

  • Dec 2022
    Post IPO Equity
  • Jan 2020
    Post IPO Equity
  • Sep 1981
    Series Unknown • $1M

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