Fractional Creative Director Jobs in San Ramon, CA

We're hiring a Fractional Marketing & Design Lead to own how Develop Health shows up in the market: the brand, the message, the channels, and the work itself.

You'll be our first dedicated marketing hire, working directly with the founders to stand the function up. You'll help set and own our marketing and design strategy. That means you're deciding what we should be doing, not just executing a list we hand you. It also means you're doing most of the work yourself: there's no full-stack team to delegate to, though you'll have partial production and execution support from our team.

Three things define success in this role:

1. You have a point of view on where we should show up. You'll look at our audiences (provider offices, pharmacies, pharma) and tell us which channels are worth our time and which aren't. We'd rather hear "that postcard campaign is a waste, here's what I'd do instead" than get a beautiful postcard.

2. You get the message right, fast. You nail the value proposition for each audience and produce on-brand materials that ship without extensive rework.

3. You build the system, not just the assets. A creative brief process, a brand library, a channel playbook, so the tenth thing we make is faster and better than the first.

You don't need a healthcare background, but you do need to pick up a complex domain quickly. Startup experience is a strong plus.

Set Direction

• Audit where we're showing up today and recommend a channel mix: what to invest in, what to kill, what to test.

• Stand up a creative brief process so requests come in structured and work goes out on-strategy.

• Build a lightweight feedback loop: what's landing with which audience, and what that changes.

Do the work

• Produce and refresh provider and sales materials (one-pagers, postcards, mailers, leave-behinds) from approved messaging, kept current as our narrative and strategy evolve.

• Direct and produce campaign work across our channels, using AI tooling to move fast on production and iteration.

Make it repeatable

• Build a well-organized brand asset library using on‑brand imagery and illustrations.

• Write a short design playbook for each channel so the team can pick it up and reuse it.

• Document the messaging architecture: what we say to whom, and why.

• You've owned a channel mix before. You can walk us through a call you made, ideally one where you killed something that wasn't working.

• Real design taste. Finished, well‑considered work that reflects the strategy behind it.

• You've run a brief process, or built one where none existed.

• You'll push back. We're founders with opinions about marketing and limited marketing expertise. We need someone who'll tell us when we're wrong.

• You nail the message and broader value proposition for a specific audience without extensive rework.

• Fast and self‑directed. This role only works if you can run without a manager.

• Our domain: prior authorization, benefit verification, and medication access, and why it matters to providers, pharmacies, and pharma.

• Our audiences: what resonates with each, especially busy clinical offices.

• Our product story: the proof points, and how to communicate them plainly and credibly.

• Experience at a high‑growth health‑tech or early‑stage startup.

• Exposure to prior authorization, pharmacy operations, or the PBM and payer landscape.

• Experience using AI tools to move fast on production and iteration.

• You want briefs handed to you with the strategy already decided.

• You're used to directing a team and handing off production.

• You need a lot of structure. We don't have much yet, and building it is part of the job.

• Competitive rate of $100-160/hour depending on experience; minimum commitment of 10 hours per week.

• A fully remote, flexible schedule.

• High‑end design and AI tooling (Figma, Notion, Claude Design, Remotion, and more).

• Work that directly accelerates access to medication for hundreds of thousands of patients, with room to grow as the marketing function scales.

Location: Menlo Park (On‑site)

Employment Type: Full time

Department: Ops