Design Director

Head of Design — India Excellence Centre

Location: India | Reports to: COO | Function: Design & Creative

Team 30 designers today, structured under 4 Design Leads reporting into this role

Scale Target 30 → 100 designers over the next 4 years

Volume 600 designs/month at full run rate

Experience Proven leadership and people-management track record; hands-on design portfolio a plus, not a hard requirement

The Role

This is a new role, created to give the design department the leadership and structure its growth has outgrown. The

department has real capability, but outcomes today are person-dependent: there's no single design process, accountability

for good, sellable design doesn't consistently sit with the design team, and current managers can run an established

process but still need supervision to do it well. That gap pulls C-suite time into deal conversion and project execution that

shouldn't need them.

We are looking for someone to own the department end to end — not primarily as its best designer, but as the person who

builds the process, trains and develops the 4 Leads and their teams, and puts a scalable structure under a department that

needs to roughly triple in size over the next four years. Creative judgment matters — you'll direct and elevate design —but the Leads carry the craft; you carry the system.

What Success Looks Like (6–12 Months)

• A self-running design department: process and people framework in place, with clear ownership of who does what.

• Capability gaps closed through active training

• One design process in place and actually followed — covering all project types, with visibility to sales and

estimation throughout

• Workflow managed for measurable improvement in both quality and speed.

• The team operating against a set scorecard of KPIs — driving more volume and a higher conversion rate on high-

value designs.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

Building the Process

• Design, own and continuously improve a single design process

• Build in the training, review points and quality checks that bring every manager and designer up to a base level consistent standard.

• Structure the department to scale over four years without losing quality or speed.

Leading the Team

• Manage the 4 Design Leads directly, and hold them accountable for what their teams produce.

• Build managerial and leadership capability where it's currently missing for process improvement, people

development, and the judgment to run a team without constant supervision.

• Put ownership of good, sellable design with the design team

Running the Department

• Own workflow and throughput for 600 designs/month, keeping sales and estimation informed as work moves

through the pipeline.

• Report against a small, named scorecard — commercial (win ratio, converted design value, volume), operational

(turnaround time, efficiency, productivity), and foundational (workflow/process setup, team training).

Thinking Like a Western Client

• Understand, manage and think the way American and European customers and brands do — direct experience with that customer base (2+ years) is a strong plus, not a hard filter.

• Get up the trade show learning curve fast: turnaround times, show regulations, materials and modular elements,

construction methods, and the pace the business runs at.

The Kind of Person We're Looking For

• Leadership first — your management and team-building track record matters more than how strong your personal portfolio is.

• A natural process / systems builder — you need to help turn a good one-off fix into something repeatable and scalable.

• Genuinely accountable — the department's wins and misses land with you, not scattered across 30 individual designers.

• Western-oriented — comfortable thinking, communicating and managing the way American and European clients and brands expect.

• Steady with a management gap — willing to closely supervise and coach managers who aren't yet operating independently, while building them toward independence.

• A Driver/Analyzer temperament — decisive and structured, comfortable working from data and process rather than instinct alone.

What You Bring

• A design degree and/or postgraduate qualification — from a tier-1/2 design school in India, or a US/UK/Canada university. At least one overseas credential is a plus.

• Experience with an international company or brand, ideally working directly with US- or Europe-based

stakeholders.

• Proven experience building and scaling a design process, team structure or way of working — something you can walk us through in detail.

• You likely won't come from India's exhibition industry — it's small, and retail or another design background is fine.

What matters is picking up the trade show ecosystem quickly: timelines, show regulations, materials and modular construction, and our business model.

• If this sounds like you, we'd love to hear about a design process or team structure you've built and scaled before along with your CV.

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