A role for a designer who wants to build a business, not just a portfolio.

This is a role for a designer who wants to build a business, not just a portfolio. We are rebuilding ad creative at The Garden from the ground up, and we are hiring one senior designer to own it: the product, the system that produces it, the standard it is held to, and the results it drives.

You sit inside our Media & Performance team, next to the people who buy the media and read the numbers. That means every ad you make is judged on click-through rate, cost per lead and conversion, and you get to treat design as a lever on return rather than a service that gets briefed. You will decide what we sell, how it is tiered and priced, how much of it AI generates and how much a human touches, and you will have an in-house video team and studio to make it with. If you have ever wanted to run creative like a founder runs a product, this is that job.

Why this role is different

Most senior design jobs in agencies put you one step removed from the result. This one puts you on the P&L.;

Design as a lever on return. You sit inside the performance team. You see the spend, the spreadsheet and the lead flow for every campaign you design for. When your creative lifts click-through rate or drops cost per lead, you see it the next morning and you get credit for it. Over a year you will learn more about what makes an ad convert than most designers learn in a career .

AI is the production line, you are the system. We are not hiring someone to hand-build every static. W e are hiring someone to build the design system, templates and prompts so that a BAU ad takes minutes, not hours, and the time saved goes into the premium work: motion, video-led and concept-driven ads that an in-house team cannot replicate. You will work with generative image and video tools daily and decide where they fit and where they do not.

A studio and a video team already here. We have an in-house video production team and a studio. You can shoot, cut and animate without briefing an external supplier. Ad creative that starts as a lo-fi film and ends as a 15-second paid asset is a Tuesday here, not a project.

Entrepreneurial by design. The ad creative product is being rebuilt from scratch: what we sell, how it is tiered, how it is priced, how it is made. You will shape that with the Director of Media & Performance, not inherit it.

What you’ll own





Ad creative, end to end. Static, motion and video ad creative across Meta, Google, YouTube, TikTok and programmatic for our clients in property , home building, aged care, retirement living, education and finance. From brief to live asset, including the on-image copy working with the team's copy resource.

Landing page and conversion design. Landing pages, forms and thank-you journeys built from wireframes the team generates, designed to convert and handed to build in hours, not days.

The design system. Templates, components, prompt libraries and brand kits per client so that BAU creative is generated fast and consistently by you, by AI, and eventually by anyone on the performance team.

The tiered ad product. With the Director of Media & Performance, define what a BAU ad pack and a premium creative tier look like, what each costs to produce, and what we charge.

Creative testing. Own the creative test plan for each account: what variations go live, what we learn, what we scale. Report creative performance alongside media performance.

Quality. Nothing leaves the team that you would not put your name on. You are the reason an account manager never has to design their own ads again.

Who’s the new Gardener we’re looking for?

- Five or more years in design, with at least two of them making paid digital ad creative where you saw the performance data
- A portfolio that shows ads that worked, not just ads that looked positive. Bring the numbers
- Motion and video editing skills (After Effects, Premiere, CapCut or equivalent). You do not need to be a cinematographer; we have those
- Hands-on with generative AI for image and video (Midjourney , Runway , Higgsfield, Veo, Sora or similar) and an opinion on where it is good enough and where it is not
- Comfortable in Figma and a landing page builder; you can take a wireframe to a built page
- Experience setting up templates or systems that let other people produce on-brand work without you

Mindset

- Commercially curious.



You want to know what the ad cost, what it returned, and what to change hand-craft five
- Builder over artisan. You would rather make the system that produces 50 ads than
- Fast and decisive. You ship, measure, iterate. You know the difference between a 45- minute ad and a 5-hour ad and you can say which is which before you start
- Comfortable being the most senior designer in the room and the only one in your team

What success looks like In your first 90 days: live accounts have creative ownership and testing plans, everyday ads turn around in under a day, and the first version of your design system is in use.

By six months: everyday static ads are largely AI-generated through your system, the premium creative tier is live on at least three accounts, and landing page design time has halved.

By 12 months: clients buy our creative because it outperforms what they can make in-house, and the results help strengthen client renewals.

This is not

X - A brand or campaign creative director role. We partner for above-the-line work

X - An awards track. We are optimising for client results, not Cannes

X - A pure production seat. If you want to be briefed and left alone, this will frustrate you

Who is The Garden?

The Garden is an independent Melbourne marketing agency for big life decisions: property, home building, aged care, retirement living, education and finance.

Over 15 years, we’ve attributed more than $3 billion in client sales to our work. Now we’re building an AI-native agency with our own internal agents, client intelligence platform and production systems. We bring strategy, creative, media, technology and data together, and we hire people who want to build with us.

What About the Perks?

Hybrid working, a work-from-anywhere week, birthday leave, anniversary rewards, and opportunities for learning, mentoring and career development.

For this role, you’ll also have access to our in-house studio, video team, AI tools and the space to shape an offering you can be proud of.

Ready to build something?

Apply through LinkedIn with your CV and a portfolio of five ads with the results they achieved.

Include a short note on the one you’d make differently today and why.

We’d love to see what you’ve made, what you’ve learned and what you’re ready to build next.

📌 Senior Digital Designer (Melbourne)
🏢 The Garden
📍 Melbourne