Head of Brand Design & Expression

Uber•Published 6 hours ago•First seen 6 hours ago

About the role

Uber is building a more integrated Global Brand function, bringing strategy, design and expression, campaigns and creative, research and insights, partnerships, and operations into one connected system. The Head of Brand Design & Expression will lead the capability that defines how Uber looks, feels, and comes to life across the world.

This role owns the evolution and stewardship of Uber's brand identity and expression system across channels and touchpoints - from visual identity, typography, color, imagery, and motion to digital, physical, experiential, and environmental applications. The leader will ensure Uber is distinctive, coherent and unmistakably Uber while giving teams and partners enough flexibility to create culturally relevant, high-impact work.

This is not a brand-policing role. We are looking for a world-class design leader who can both set a compelling creative vision and build the systems, standards, tools and talent that allow that vision to scale. You will partner closely with the Head of Global Brand and leaders across Campaigns & Creative, Brand Strategy, Creative Operations & Production, Research & Insights, Brand Partnerships, Product Design and regional Marketing teams.

What you'll do

Own Uber's global brand expression system. Define and evolve the visual, verbal, and experiential principles that make Uber recognizable and distinctive across markets, products, and channels.
Set the design vision and quality bar. Establish a clear point of view for how Uber should show up now and where the brand should go next; raise the craft and ambition of work across internal teams and external partners.
Build for coherence without sameness. Create a system that protects the core signals of the Uber brand while enabling flexibility across Mobility, Delivery and new businesses, geographies, audiences and cultural contexts.
Lead brand identity and expression across touchpoints. Guide the application of the brand across campaign systems, digital and social, product-adjacent surfaces, partnerships, physical environments, events, out-of-home, fleet and other real-world experiences.
Evolve the system from evidence, not taste alone. Partner with Research & Insights to understand distinctiveness, recognition, attribution and brand equity; use testing and learning to make better design decisions and strengthen memory structures over time.
Partner deeply with Campaigns & Creative. Ensure campaign ideas can live powerfully within the Uber brand while allowing creative teams and agencies to stretch the system intelligently. Own the expression system; enable great work within it.
Create reusable systems, not one-off solutions. Turn strong design thinking into scalable toolkits, templates, motion systems, component libraries and guidance that help teams create better work faster around the world.
Shape digital and physical brand experiences. Work across product, marketing, and operational touchpoints so the brand feels coherent when people encounter Uber in an app, on a street, at an airport, through a partnership, or in a campaign.
Lead strategic design partners and agencies. Build strong senior relationships with the best external design and brand partners, ensuring Uber gets outstanding talent, fresh thinking and world-class craft.
Build and lead a high-performing global design organization. Develop senior design leaders and specialists across brand, digital, and offline expression; create clear accountability, a strong critique culture, and meaningful growth paths.
Modernize how brand design is created and scaled. Partner with Creative Operations & Production on new tools, AI-enabled workflows, asset systems and production models that increase speed and consistency without lowering the design bar.
Be a senior brand leader for the company. Bring a strong point of view to major brand questions, new business launches, partnerships, and enterprise initiatives where how Uber shows up matters materially.

What success looks like

Uber becomes more distinctive, recognizable and coherent across markets and touchpoints without becoming rigid or formulaic.
Teams and agencies understand what makes work unmistakably Uber and can apply the system with greater confidence and speed.
The brand expression system evolves deliberately as the business changes, rather than through disconnected one-off decisions.
Campaigns, partnerships, product-adjacent experiences, and physical environments feel like one brand while retaining the flexibility needed for context and culture.
Brand Design is seen as a source of creative leadership and leverage - not a downstream approval function.
Design quality rises across the portfolio, with stronger craft, clearer memory structures, and better use of Uber's distinctive brand assets.
The design organization attracts and develops exceptional talent and creates scalable systems that improve work beyond the projects it directly touches.

Basic qualifications

12+ years of experience in brand design, identity, creative direction, design leadership or a closely related field, with significant leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated experience defining or evolving major brand identity and expression systems at global or large-scale organizations, brands, or agencies.
Exceptional portfolio and track record across multiple dimensions of brand expression, such as identity, campaigns, digital, motion, experiential, environmental and physical design.
Experience leading multidisciplinary design teams and senior design leaders, with a strong record of developing talent and raising craft standards.
Ability to move between high-level brand vision and execution details, providing clear, actionable design direction without becoming a bottleneck.
Experience partnering with senior marketing, creative, product, and business leaders and influencing decisions in complex, matrixed environments.
Strong understanding of how brand systems scale globally while remaining relevant across markets, audiences, and lines of business.

Preferred qualifications

Experience leading brand design or design systems for a globally recognized consumer, technology, mobility, hospitality, retail or culture-shaping brand.
Experience across both in-house brand teams and leading design / creative agencies, or deep experience partnering closely with both.
Fluency in digital-first brand systems, motion, product-adjacent expression and the relationship between brand identity and user experience.
Experience using research, testing and brand measurement to inform design decisions and assess distinctiveness, attribution and effectiveness.
Experience building scalable design systems, toolkits and governance models that enable large, distributed organizations and agency ecosystems.
Familiarity with emerging AI and design technologies and a thoughtful point of view on how they can expand creative possibility and scale while protecting brand integrity.

Leadership profile

Visionary design leader: You can articulate a compelling point of view for how a global brand should look, feel, and evolve - and translate that vision into systems people can actually use.

Exceptional craft judgment: You have a high bar for ideas and execution, can diagnose why work is not yet good enough, and know how to elevate it without prescribing every solution.

System builder: You create coherence at scale. You can turn principles into practical design systems, tools and standards without making the brand rigid.

Collaborative enterprise leader: You build strong partnerships across creative, marketing, product and business teams and can align diverse stakeholders around a clear design direction.

Confident challenger: You can protect the integrity and distinctiveness of the brand, challenge convention and senior stakeholders constructively, and make clear decisions when opinions differ.

Culture builder: You create an environment where critique is rigorous, designers do their best work, leaders grow, and craft matters.

Future-oriented: You are curious about culture, technology, AI, and new forms of expression, and continuously push the brand system to stay relevant without chasing novelty for its own sake.

Key partnerships

Head of Global Brand - brand direction, capability priorities and integration across the Global Brand system.
Head of Campaigns & Creative - campaign expression, creative quality and the relationship between the brand system and campaign ideas.
Head of Brand Strategy & Planning - positioning, architecture, brand platforms and strategic principles that design must express.
Head of Creative Operations & Production - design workflows, resourcing, production, tools, asset systems and scaling.
Research & Insights - distinctiveness, attribution, brand health, testing and evidence that informs evolution of the system.
Brand Partnerships - how Uber shows up with major partners and in shared brand environments.
Product Design and Experience teams - coherence between marketing expression and product-adjacent brand experiences where relevant.
Regional and local Marketing teams - culturally relevant application of the system and identification of recurring needs that should inform global evolution.
External design and creative agencies - world-class craft, specialist capabilities and new perspectives on the Uber brand.

Why this role matters

Uber shows up in more places, formats and cultural contexts than most brands: in apps, cities, cars, restaurants, airports, partnerships, sports, entertainment and everyday moments around the world. The opportunity is not simply to make those expressions consistent. It is to make them collectively build a stronger, more distinctive, and more valuable brand. This leader will define the design system that makes that possible - creating a clear global identity, raising the quality of expression, and ensuring Uber can evolve with the business while remaining unmistakably Uber.

Responsibilities

For New York City, NY-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $234,000 per year - USD $260,000 per year.

You will be eligible to participate in Uber's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. All full-time employees are eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan. You will also be eligible for various benefits.

Ready to Ride?

This isn't the kind of place where you follow a playbook — it's where you help write one. If you're driven by impact, energized by challenge, and ready to shape how the world moves — we'd love to hear from you.

You may be eligible for bonuses, equity, and other compensation, as well as a range of benefits. Explore our benefits.

Offices remain key to collaboration and Uber's culture. Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements.

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing this form.