Technical Art Director
Location: Chicago, IL (or remote for extremely well-qualified candidates)
Office: 3 days/week in South Loop office
Reports to: Principal, Video Team
Employment Type: Fixed-term, benefits eligible, contract through end of 2026 cycle, with strong potential to convert to permanent
About Tavern Research
Tavern Research is a political tech startup building tools and insights to help our customers win elections and make better, evidence-based decisions. We specialize in scaling expert human work, such as content generation and survey research to support thoughtful, data-driven civic engagement. We're a venture-backed, mission-driven, fast-moving, and mostly technical team focused on supporting campaigns and organizations working to strengthen democratic participation. We are experimental by design and expect every team member to continuously improve how they work using new tools and technology. Everything else is on our website. If you still have questions, let us know when you apply!
About You
You have an eye. You've spent years editing, designing, and shipping creative work that had to perform, not just look nice, and you've developed instincts that hold up under deadline pressure.
You're unusually technical for a creative lead. You know your way around at least one programming language (Python, HTML, CSS, preferably JavaScript), and you think about asset libraries the way a senior engineer thinks about shared infrastructure: build it once, build it well, and let the whole team move faster.
You're AI-native. You know how to direct machine output the way a good director runs a shoot: knowing exactly what you want, recognizing it when you see it, and pushing past the first few drafts to get there.
You thrive in fast-paced, high-output environments and understand what makes persuasive creative effective. You're comfortable iterating quickly, giving and receiving thoughtful feedback, and collaborating closely with technical and cross-functional teams, and giving thoughtful, direct feedback that makes the work better. You care about quality, momentum, and the mission.
About the role
This is a senior creative role with real ownership. You'll establish Tavern's visual standard across every ad, video, and deliverable we ship, and you'll build the systems that let a small team produce work at the volume and quality our clients pay for.
Most of our creative pipeline starts with AI-generated drafts. Your job is to define what "good" looks like, then encode that standard into tooling that governs on-screen text rendering, color grading, transitions, graphic treatments, and the broader visual practices that keep our output consistent. You'll partner closely with engineers to turn your creative judgment into generalizable, scalable code.
Day to day, you'll move between hands-on creative work and systems building. You'll cut and polish ads that clients are spending real money to put in front of voters.
This role is structured as a fixed-term contract through the end of the 2026 cycle, with strong potential to convert to a permanent position based on fit and business needs. We're looking for someone who's ready to make an impact from day one and grow with us.
Responsibilities
- Write and maintain technical creative brief files that codify our approach to on-screen text, color grades, transitions, graphic treatments, and visual best practices. The goal: consistent, high-quality output across the whole team.
- Direct AI-generated creative drafts to a finished, persuasive standard, and continuously improve the prompts, references, and pipelines that produce them
- Partner with engineers to translate creative judgment into shared infrastructure: components, templates, and tooling that scale
- Build and maintain the creative asset library: templates, fonts, and brand elements
- Create original data visualizations and graphics that translate research findings into clear, persuasive visuals
- Collaborate with researchers and strategists to bring polling and content-testing insights to life visually
- Mentor and raise the bar for other creatives on the team, formally or informally, as the team grows
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in video production, visual design, art direction, or comparable creative roles. Your portfolio should show work that performed, not just work that won awards.
- Deep fluency in video post-production: color grading, finishing, and quality standards. Whether that comes from hands-on editing experience or directing AI-generated output to a polished standard, you know what good looks like and can get there.
- Working familiarity with at least one programming language (Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript). You don't need to be an engineer, but you need to be comfortable reading and maintaining code.
- Demonstrated heavy use of AI tools in creative workflows, with a clear point of view on what works and what doesn't
- Strong instincts around layout, typography, visual hierarchy, motion, and pacing
- Track record of building templates, style systems, or scalable creative frameworks. Bonus if any of it lived in code.
- Comfortable managing scope, timelines, and revisions
- Able to collaborate with engineers as a peer: informing product decisions, troubleshooting limitations, and translating design needs into actionable technical feedback
- Political, advocacy, or campaign experience strongly preferred. You should understand what makes a political ad work and be able to articulate why.
To be explicit: you don't need a degree to work here. You just need to be exceptional at the things we're asking from you.
Benefits
- Premium health insurance
- Unlimited PTO
- Office closed for all federal holidays
- 401k match
- Equity
Tavern Research is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
The pay range for this role is:
127,000 - 147,300 USD per year (Chicago, IL)