Associate Director, Solutions Design & Development

About WPP Media

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth. WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

At WPP Media, we believe in the power of our culture and our people. It’s what elevates us to deliver exceptional experiences for both our clients and each other. In this role it will be critical to embrace WPP & WPP Media’s shared core values:

• Be Extraordinary by Leading Collectively to Inspire transformational Creativity.
• Create an Open environment by Balancing People and Client Experiences by Cultivating Trust.
• Lead Optimistically by Championing Growth and Development to Mobilize the Enterprise.

Role Overview

Solutions Design is the team that turns strategic intent into client-ready media propositions that are sound, operationally credible and genuinely differentiated. As an Associate Director in Solutions Design, you are a hands‑on solution builder and an emerging strategic voice. You sit within a team whose job is to design best‑in‑market media propositions that connect channels, data and outcomes, and your role is to get into the detail of making that happen. You will work across both brand and performance media. Whether the brief calls for reach and resonance or measurable conversion, you are expected to be fluent across the spectrum, grounded in your own area of expertise, but always designing with the full‑funnel in mind. You will work closely with your Director and across Solutions Design, Media Solutions, Investment, Data & Technology and Client teams. You are the person who rolls up their sleeves, testing ideas, building the materials, stress‑testing the logic, and ensuring what gets designed actually holds up.

Responsibilities

• Supporting the design of and execution of media solutions across brand and performance channels that are grounded in client objectives and configured for cross‑channel delivery.
• Getting hands‑on with solution development, drafting frameworks, building test designs, writing up solution logic and iterating on materials until they’re genuinely fit for purpose.
• Testing and validating new ideas prioritisation frameworks (i.e. MoSCoW, DFV, RICE), doing the legwork to prove or disprove a concept before it scales.
• Maintaining a sharp view of the competitive landscape across brand and performance media, understanding what others are doing and where our differentiation sits.
• Owning your product documentation, keeping materials accurate, consistent and useful for the teams selling and activating your solutions.
• Building a detailed working understanding of how media is planned, activated and measured across brand and performance channels, and keeping pace with how that evolves.
• Staying connected to agency practitioners to understand how solutions land in market and where they need refinement.
• Contributing to client‑facing materials, pitches and thought leadership, bringing clarity and commercial awareness to how we present our capabilities.
• Supporting colleague upskilling, helping agency teams understand and confidently sell the solutions you have built.
• Ensuring the solutions you design are commercially sound, with pricing, margin and supply chain considered from the outset, not retrofitted.
• Participating in cross‑functional working groups and taking active ownership of moving solutions from design through testing to deployment.
• Tracking solution performance and identifying what’s working, what needs iteration and what should be retired.

Skills and Experience

• You are fluent in media. You have strong working knowledge across brand and performance channels. Whether your depth sits in programmatic, TV, social, OOH, audio or paid search, you understand how channels connect and what good looks like end‑to‑end.
• You champion product excellence. You proficiently apply product and/or project management principles, guiding solutions through their entire lifecycle from strategic conception and design to successful delivery and continuous optimisation.
• You build things. You are comfortable getting hands‑on, drafting frameworks, building test designs, writing up solution logic, iterating on materials. You don’t wait to be handed a polished brief.
• You are a solution thinker. You can synthesise across channels, data and client objectives into a clear, coherent design, and you know how to validate whether it actually works.
• You make the complex simple. You communicate complicated media and technology concepts clearly, to senior stakeholders and agency teams alike.
• You are naturally curious. You keep pace with how the market is changing and bring that knowledge into the work, not just the conversation.
• You care about the work. You are assertive, collaborative and invested in doing things properly, for clients, colleagues and the broader business.

Life at WPP Media & Benefits

Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising. We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in‑office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days. WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.