Creative Lead - Belfast

About the job

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC. It's an exciting time to join HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). As the UK's tax authority, we collect the money that pays for public services and support millions of customers every year to get their tax and benefits right.

HMRC Communications delivers professional, high impact communications and campaigns across the organisation and is part of the Government Communication Service (GCS). Brand and Creative sits within HMRC Communications and provides specialist design, motion and creative support for priority campaigns and business objectives.

The Creative Lead provides senior creative leadership across Brand and Creative, ensuring the consistent development and delivery of high-quality, impactful creative work that supports HMRC's communications objectives. The role sits at the heart of creative quality and direction, leading concept development, storytelling and execution, while also building and sustaining creative excellence through strong leadership, clear processes and professional development of the team. The role combines hands-on creative involvement with strategic oversight, people leadership and responsibility for managing creative resources, budgets and external suppliers.

Creative Leadership and Delivery

• Lead the creative development of major campaigns, projects and commissions, across all formats and channels, including print, digital and integrated campaign activity, ensuring work is consistently high quality and fit for purpose, from brief through to final delivery.
• Provide senior creative direction to ensure work is clear, engaging, on-brand and aligned to communications objectives, working with a wide range of internal clients across HMRC, navigating multiple decision-makers while maintaining clarity of creative direction and ownership.
• Operate confidently in a fast-paced environment, balancing the need for pace and responsiveness with thoughtful creative judgement, acting as the creative authority for complex, high-profile or reputationally sensitive work.
• Provide clear creative leadership and challenge where required, constructively testing briefs, assumptions and delivery expectations to protect creative quality and effectiveness, using strong professional judgement to offer solutions that balance ambition, feasibility and impact.
• Remain actively involved in hands-on creative work where appropriate, leading by example and setting the quality bar.

Creative Excellence, Quality and Process

• Champion creative excellence across Brand and Creative, maintaining consistently high standards of concept, storytelling and execution.
• Develop and embed clear creative processes and frameworks that support quality, efficiency and continuous improvement.
• Use learning, feedback and insight to drive ongoing improvements in creative output and ways of working.
• Encourage innovation and progressive thinking within a controlled and appropriate public sector context.

People leadership and capability building

• Provide direct line management to members of the creative team.
• Set clear expectations, manage performance and support professional development.
• Coach and mentor creatives to build confidence, judgement and creative capability.
• Foster an inclusive, collaborative and supportive culture that enables creativity to thrive.

Commercial, Budget and Supplier Management

• Hold responsibility for managing creative budgets, ensuring value for money and effective planning.
• Lead relationships with external suppliers and third-party creative agencies.
• Commission and manage outsourced creative work, ensuring it meets HMRC's standards and objectives.
• Balance in-house and external resource to meet demand while maintaining quality and pace.

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement

• Work in close partnership with the account management team, recognising their central role in managing client relationships, resource allocation and the coordination of creative projects across Brand and Creative, providing senior leadership and oversight where required, ensuring strong alignment between client needs, creative direction and delivery priorities.
• Bring senior creative direction, critical thinking and constructive challenge to briefs where required, supporting strong creative outcomes while respecting established briefing and governance processes.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across Communications and the wider business, helping to establish clear creative authority and confidence in the Brand and Creative offer.
• Encourage a strong networking and relationship building culture across the creative team, supporting individuals to engage effectively with stakeholders and represent Brand and Creative with confidence and professionalism.

Essential Criteria

• Significant experience in a senior creative role such as Art Director or Creative Lead, with a strong track record of leading creative development and delivering high quality work.
• Experience leading creative at scale in a complex organisation helping creative teams navigate layered governance and decision making, including management of budgets, suppliers and external creative partners.
• Experience working with or commissioning external creative agencies and suppliers as a senior client and managing budgets.
• Understanding of how creative supports behaviour change, public engagement or service outcomes with confidence in balancing creative ambition with organisational risk, particularly in sensitive or reputational contexts.
• Experienced in line managing and developing creative professionals, responsible for building creative processes or quality frameworks to support their development and evolution.
• Excellent creative judgement and the ability to give clear, constructive direction and feedback, using strong stakeholder management and communication skills at all levels as well as broad appreciation for creative and design trends, helping keep work relevant and authoritative.
• Experience executing and leading creative across all formats, including online and offline (inc. print), corporate- and campaign-style creative deliverables.
• Significant understanding in creative areas of motion and graphic design and copywriting, including understanding of Adobe Creative Suite (including InDesign, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat) and other relevant creative software.
• Excellent knowledge of accessibility principles and guidelines, as well as working expertly within organisational brand guidelines.
• Exceptional communications and stakeholder management skills.

Benefits

• Alongside your salary of 58,541, HM Revenue and Customs contributes 16,959 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.
• HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments.
• We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies. Personal support. Coaching and development.