Director, Emerging Creative Technology (EMEA)

JOB PURPOSE

This position sits in our Marketing & Technology service based in London. We combine data, technology, creative content, and paid media to crack brands’ business problems & drive revenue through a variety of digital marketing solutions like ad campaigns, augmented reality, and chatbots. Our clients include PepsiCo, Just Eat Takeaway, Twitch, TikTok and L’Oréal.

Own DEPT®’s emerging creative technology practice across EMEA — the experimentation engine that discovers what's next in AI-enabled creative and content production. Lead its direction, win and shape the work, and embed the capability in our most strategic client relationships, while owning the R&D agenda and the products that turn experimentation into repeatable, revenue-generating practice.

The role sits at the intersection of creative technology, commercial growth, and capability building. It moves fluidly between the client and pitch rooms and the strategic work of the R&D agenda, product thinking, and the future direction of AI-enabled creative.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Practice leadership and commercial growth

• Lead the emerging AI creative practice across the region. Win and shape new business; pitches, scoping, propositions, and commercial models. Convert demand into a defined, repeatable, profitable offer.

Senior client partnership

• Named accountability on flagship accounts or projects. Shape clients’ innovation pilots and Creative AI roadmaps upstream as a trusted advisor. Lead the delivery of emerging creative‑technology engagements directly with clients - experimentation applied to real briefs - and provide oversight and escalation across the wider portfolio.

AI capability and R&D roadmap

• Own the development of the R&D agenda for emerging creative technology in collaboration with peers across the business.
• Maintain a deep working understanding of the field – the models, techniques, and principles beneath the tools – so the practice stays ahead of the market.
• Balance two tracks: proven production tools and trusted workflows that identify new production and revenue streams, and an experimentation track that brings emerging models and techniques into the offer ahead of the market.
• Own the path by which the experiments become standard. Push the agency’s wider creative‑technology literacy and capability forward, working with markets to embed it in delivery and design teams.

Product and innovation

• Own the orchestration and product thinking that connects creative production end‑to‑end – the layer between idea, production, versioning, scale and optimisation, including quality control at volume and the feedback loops that improve output over time.
• Turn what’s proven in experimentation into repeatable product and standard practice, and identify where the next commercial offerings sit.
• Maintain working awareness of proprietary tooling so the practice stays complementary to it.

Connect to the DEPT® Ecosystem

• Work in close collaboration with the Deptify (proprietary orchestration product) and Studio teams – both established core solutions. Stay close to what they’re building so the edge and core stay aligned, duplication is avoided, and proven work hands cleanly from experimentation into their remit. Support integrations and work flexibly alongside them on projects where the handoff isn’t yet defined, driving the offer forward together.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 10+ years across creative agency, content production, or applied creative technology, with meaningful time at senior practitioner and practice‑leadership level
• Track record of winning and growing creative technology / AI work commercially
• Hands‑on credibility across copy, image, video, and audio generation. You hold the room with clients on tools, approaches, and trade‑offs
• Experience helping teams and markets adopt new creative‑technology tools and ways of working
• Strong executive presence and senior client relationships
• On the bleeding edge – you don’t just follow the field, you have a personal practice of testing what’s emerging and an informed view on where it’s going next
• Able to move fluidly between strategy, commercial, and delivery

WE OFFER

• A flexible, hybrid working policy
• The choice of medical healthcare providers (Bupa or Medicash)
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays and your birthday off each year
• Company pension scheme
• EAP scheme
• Ride to work scheme
• Enhanced family friendly policies
• Buddy Program: You will be paired with a ‘Buddy’ to help you through your first weeks’ at DEPT®.
• A reputation for doing good. DEPT® has been a Certified B Corp® since 2021 and named ‘Agency of the Year’ at both The Lovies and The Webby Awards.
• Awesome clients. Whether big or small, local or global – at DEPT® you’ll get the opportunity to work with clients of all sizes and across all industries. And we celebrate all of our successes together!
• The opportunity for possibility. We want to enable you to do what you do best and help you develop your skills further with training, development and certifications.
• Global annual DEPT® Cares Month in which employees come together and donate their skills to support local charities.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

At DEPT®, we take pride in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We actively seek to recruit, develop, nurture, and retain talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, with varying skills and perspectives.