Senior Digital Designer and Creative Technologist

Publicis Groupe · Johannesburg

Company description

Publicis Groupe Africa is a leading marketing, communications, and business transformation network operating across 36 African countries, combining creativity, technology, and local insight to deliver integrated client solutions.

Publicis Groupe Africa is part of Publicis Groupe, the second-largest communications group globally, founded in 1926. The African network operates as a partnership of 44 communications agencies with offices spanning 36 countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, and many others.

Its headquarters are in Johannesburg and Cape Town, providing a central hub for continental operations.

Within Publicis Groupe’s Intelligent Creativity business, we specialize in bringing creative ideas to life, and to consumers. By combining 100 years of craft excellence with 6,000 experts across 52 locations of the world’s biggest studio network, we leverage the industry’s richest data, through the power of agentic AI, to radically redefine content production with Intelligent Content. We intuitively deliver this through Marcel Make, the world’s first Intelligent Content agent. The result? Predictively performing content that unlocks business growth in unprecedented ways. No more guesswork. No more waste.

Just content that works, working a lot harder.

Overview

SENIOR DIGITAL DESIGNER AND CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST

Design Leadership | Creative Technology | Brand Custodianship | Digital Craft

THE OPPORTUNITY

Telecommunications is one of the most dynamic categories in the market, sitting at the intersection of technology, culture, connectivity, customer experience and everyday life. This role offers the opportunity to work with a leading telecommunications client and help shape the next generation of its agency partnership.

We are building a connected, future-fit model that brings together creativity, intelligence, data, technology, AI and world-class execution around the customer. It is an opportunity to influence the work and the capabilities we build, creating a partnership designed for today’s challenges and what comes next.

ROLE PURPOSE

The Senior Digital Designer and Creative Technologist leads digital design and applies emerging technology to campaigns, content and brand experiences. The role combines strong concepts, visual craft and technical experimentation to create distinctive work, reusable systems and effective digital experiences.

Working with the Creative Director, the role owns complex design work, guides other designers and partners with UX, Technology and Production. As a senior creative and brand custodian, they ensure work aligns with the client’s brand strategy, visual identity, tone and approved guidelines from concept through delivery.

Responsibilities

CREATIVE DIRECTION AND DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Translate briefs, strategy and audience insight into clear design approaches; develop and present distinctive visual routes with sound rationale.
Establish the visual language for assigned campaigns, including typography, composition, imagery, motion principles and cross-format behaviour.
Act as a brand custodian across assigned work: review creative against brand strategy, CI guidelines and campaign playbooks, resolve inconsistencies and escalate proposed departures for approval before release.

DIGITAL SYSTEMS AND PLATFORM CRAFT

Lead design across social, digital advertising, web, mobile and other agreed touchpoints, ensuring each execution suits its context.
Build and maintain reusable components, templates and design guidance that translate approved brand standards into consistent campaign roll-out.
Partner with UX and developers on responsive behaviour, accessibility and feasibility, keeping visual-design and UX responsibilities clearly aligned.

PRODUCTION AND QUALITY LEADERSHIP

Own design and brand quality from concept through final handover, checking assets, specifications and implementation against approved creative, brand standards and platform requirements.
Plan complex design work with Delivery, identify dependencies and effort requirements, and raise scope or timing risks with practical options.
Guide production and specialist partners on the intended design outcome; use feedback and performance learning to strengthen future work.

CLIENT PARTNERSHIP AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Present design recommendations confidently to clients and internal stakeholders, explain trade-offs and guide constructive decisions.
Mentor junior and mid-level designers, provide useful critique and delegate work while maintaining clear quality standards.
Contribute to pitches and studio capability building, partnering across Strategy, Copy, Art Direction, Media, UX and Technology.

CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY AND AI INNOVATION

Explore and prototype technology-led creative ideas, interactive experiences and AI-assisted content. Assess feasibility with Technology and Production, test concepts early and turn successful experiments into usable creative solutions.
Develop repeatable AI and automation workflows for design and asset production. Direct and refine outputs, coach designers in prompting and quality assessment, and use approved tools while protecting client data, intellectual property and usage rights.
Evaluate emerging tools against creative value, brand alignment, quality and efficiency. Document practical workflows and handovers, measure improvements, and retain human review and accountability for all final work.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

Distinctive, effective digital design that consistently reflects the client’s brand strategy and identity.
Strong design systems and templates that improve consistency and reduce rework.
Reliable quality, estimates and delivery across assigned workstreams.
Greater client confidence and stronger craft capability among developing designers.
Creative technology prototypes and adopted AI workflows that improve creative impact, quality or production efficiency.

CRITICAL CAPABILITIES

Advanced visual craft, conceptual judgement, digital design leadership and brand custodianship.
Systems thinking, platform fluency and scalable design approaches.
Quality assurance, prioritisation and production problem solving.
Client presentation, constructive critique and designer mentoring.
Creative technology prototyping, AI-enabled workflows, automation and practical team capability development.

Qualifications

At least six years of relevant digital design experience, with demonstrated application of creative technology.
A portfolio with at least four strong examples showing concept development, execution across formats, brand consistency and ownership of complex work; include technology-led prototypes or experiences.
Advanced proficiency in Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Figma, with strong presentation skills.
Experience guiding designers and collaborating with UX, development and production teams; practical understanding of interactive prototyping and digital implementation. Motion, rich-media, 3D and coding or scripting skills are advantageous.
Demonstrated experience applying AI and emerging tools to creative work, with examples of prototypes, repeatable workflows, quality controls and knowledge sharing.

Additional information

Publicis Groupe Africa is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits any forms of Discrimination or Harassment. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our employees in line with our Employment Equity Plan.

All appointments will be based on qualifications, experience and best fit but preference will be given to candidates from designated groups. Interested candidates must please submit a concise CV including a link to your portfolio if necessary. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks after submitting your application, please consider your application as unsuccessful.