Contract Creative Director Jobs in Reston, VA (NOW HIRING)

Please note: This role is contingent upon a contract award. While it is not an immediate opening, we are actively conducting interviews and extending offers in anticipation of the award.

The Role
We are looking for a Sr. Creative Director who can lead important work, build exceptional teams, and create the conditions for ambitious ideas to thrive.

This role sits at the heart of Creative. The Sr. Creative Director is responsible for the quality, direction, and creative sensibility of a significant portfolio of work, as well as the teams responsible for creating it. This person should be able to see the big picture without losing sight of the idea, the craft, or the audience. They should know when to push, when to protect, and when to simplify.

Much of the work will address some of the most consequential issues facing people and communities, including public health, education, and large-scale behavior-change communications. These are often complex subjects involving diverse audiences, deeply held beliefs, competing sources of information, and decisions with real consequences for individual and community health.

The right experience, however, can come from anywhere truly great integrated creative work gets made. Consumer brands. Healthcare. Technology. Culture. We are looking for someone who understands not just how creativity can attract attention, but how the right idea can make complex information human, connect with people, shift perception, build confidence, and move audiences to act.

The strongest candidates will have a body of work that demonstrates original thinking, exceptional creative judgment, and consistently high standards of craft. Industry recognition and award-winning work are valued, but what matters most is evidence of ideas that were distinctive, beautifully made, strategically sound, and effective.

Job Location
Hybrid in the Washington, DC area with commute as needed to client and ICF offices. Required travel to the Atlanta, GA area for meetings, workshops, and presentations as needed.

What You Will Do

• Lead the creative direction and quality of a significant portfolio of clients, national campaigns, and multidisciplinary creative teams.

• Establish a clear creative point of view and ensure the work is distinctive, strategically grounded, beautifully crafted, and capable of moving people.

• Lead the development of major public health, health education, and behavior-change campaigns from initial strategy and concept through production, launch, and optimization.

• See the broader creative opportunity around a client, audience, health issue, or behavior while protecting the strength and simplicity of the central idea.

• Translate formative research, audience insight, behavioral science, health communications strategy, and cultural understanding into creative opportunities that connect with people and influence what they think, feel, and do.

• Help teams turn complex health information, scientific evidence, and public guidance into communications that feel clear, relevant, credible, and human.

• Lead and develop Associate Creative Directors, art directors, copywriters, designers, and other creative specialists.

• Build strong multidisciplinary creative teams and partnerships, creating the right conditions for people and ideas to do their best work.

• Guide teams through concept development, testing, refinement, presentation, production, launch, and campaign evolution while maintaining consistently high creative standards.

• Push teams beyond the expected and help turn strong individual ideas into fully realized creative platforms and connected bodies of work.

• Work closely with strategy, research, behavioral science, media, production, experience, technology, communications, and other disciplines to create integrated ideas that work across channels and experiences.

• Direct creative development across television, video, social media, digital, audio, print, web, out-of-home, experiential, and emerging platforms.

• Ensure campaign ideas can adapt effectively for different audiences, communities, languages, cultural contexts, and stages of readiness.

• Present and defend ambitious creative thinking to senior clients and stakeholders with clarity, conviction, and a compelling creative rationale.

• Build trusted relationships with senior clients and help create the confidence and space required to produce ambitious creative work.

• Lead creative workshops, reviews, and presentations and help stakeholders evaluate work against audience needs, campaign objectives, and the strength of the creative idea.

• Navigate complex, regulated, and highly scrutinized stakeholder environments without allowing process or consensus to dilute the work.

• Incorporate stakeholder, audience-testing, and campaign-performance feedback while protecting strategic and creative integrity.

• Maintain oversight of major productions and ensure the creative vision and quality of the work are protected through execution.

• Partner with production teams during photography, video production, animation, editorial, sound, post-production, and asset development.

• Ensure work meets applicable standards for accessibility, plain language, health literacy, brand consistency, and inclusive communications.

• Identify, attract, mentor, and develop exceptional creative talent and build teams capable of delivering against evolving client and agency needs.

• Help grow the creative ambition, quality, and reputation of ICF's work across public health, the public sector, and other priority growth areas.

• Contribute senior creative leadership to pitches and new opportunities, helping demonstrate the value and potential of creativity within ICF.

• Help shape the broader creative standards, culture, capabilities, and reputation of the organization.

What This Role Requires

• Must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.

• U.S. Citizenship required (required by the federal government for this position).

• 10+ years leading Creative Directors, Associate Creative Directors, and other senior creative talent.

• 8+ years of experience leading integrated campaigns across platforms such as video, digital, social, audio, experiential, print, out-of-home, web, and emerging platforms.

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years of agency experience

• Public-sector or federal experience is welcome but not required. Candidates with outstanding experience from consumer brands, healthcare, technology, culture, and other sectors are strongly encouraged.

• Experience developing public health, healthcare, health education, social marketing, or behavior-change campaigns is highly valued.

• Familiarity with audience research, message testing, behavioral science, health literacy, accessibility, or inclusive communications is advantageous.

Professional Skills

• A body of work that demonstrates both creative excellence and the ability to connect with audiences and drive meaningful outcomes.

• A track record of leading, building, and developing high-performing multidisciplinary creative teams.

• Exceptional creative judgment and the ability to recognize, shape, push, and protect a powerful idea.

• Experience establishing a clear creative vision across a significant and complex portfolio of work.

• Deep understanding of how strategy, audience insight, behavioral understanding, culture, storytelling, and craft come together to create work that moves people.

• Experience translating complex, technical, scientific, or sensitive subject matter into clear and compelling creative communications.

• Confidence presenting ambitious creative thinking to senior executives and influencing complex groups of stakeholders.

• The ability to lead multiple significant campaigns, teams, and client relationships simultaneously without compromising creative quality.

• A strong creative point of view combined with the leadership skills to bring teams, clients, and collaborators with you.

• Experience working on complex, high-stakes, highly visible, regulated, or highly scrutinized communications is strongly valued.

• Industry recognition and award-winning work are valued as evidence of creative excellence, but are not a requirement.

What Makes This Role Different
The Sr. Creative Director is responsible for more than individual campaigns or accounts. They lead and build a portfolio of work and the creative teams behind it, shaping its overall quality, direction, and creative sensibility.

This role requires the ability to move between the big picture and the idea itself: setting a creative vision across a broad body of work while still recognizing the thought, line, image, or execution that can make an individual campaign exceptional.

It also requires the judgment to lead creative work in areas where clarity, trust, cultural understanding, and accuracy matter enormously. The work must be creatively ambitious, but it must also help people understand complicated health issues, feel seen rather than spoken at, and make informed decisions.

Working at ICF

Pay Range - There are multiple factors that are considered in determining final pay for a position, including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and competencies that align to the specified role, geographic location, education and certifications as well as contract provisions regarding labor categories that are specific to the position.

The pay range for this position based on full-time employment is: