Account Director

Job Title: Account Director

Job Level: Senior/Director Level

Job Functions: Client Relations, Account and Project Management, Business Development, Strategy, Creative Collaboration

Description:

The Account Director is responsible for working collaboratively with the client and creative teams to enable INDUSTRY to deliver premium work. The Account Director leads complex programs and multiple cross-discipline projects, working with both internal designers and external client teams. The Account Director is a strategic and creative collaborator, not just a taskmaster - responsible for both the strategic vision of the client’s engagement with INDUSTRY. Handling the day-to-day tactics of client communication for their assigned pieces of business. The Account Director ensures projects move forward on time and on budget while always voicing and interpreting the needs of the client.

This in an exempt position and is full-time contract to permanent hire and based in Portland, Oregon. As of 2025, the Account Director will report directly to the Group Account Director while working collaboratively with all teams.

Responsibilities:

• Innately understands and can articulate INDUSTRY’s offerings and expertise
• Knows both the client’s culture and INDUSTRY’s culture - understanding business needs and internal organizational context
• Manages relationships, actively seeking to build a rapport with client’s team
• Great people skills - social, open, confident, trustworthy, and approachable
• Manages daily activities of a project, requiring proactive communication with the internal project team and the client
• Works with other members of the account team to deliver on the overall vision for a project
• Determines the best way to visually articulate project milestone/status tracker, and works with account team to continuously monitor progress and deliverable timelines
• Identifies impediments or challenges and proactively works to resolve them
• Writes proposals and co-presents INDUSTRY’s creative approach alongside INDUSTRY team members
• Defines resources (both internal design team and external subcontractors), sets budgets, and identifies and solves potential roadblocks
• Provides context of client roles and histories to internal creative team, enabling creative team to know all available context of client
• Synthesizes feedback/input from client/team and condenses into actionable next steps
• Documents and shares information with both internal creative and external client teams
• Leads meetings and sets expectations before meetings and follow-up action items
• Constantly maintains client relationships - proactively and self-motivated in growing existing and new business opportunities
• Collectively with the INDUSTRY team, helps identify and organize PR opportunities for INDUSTRY’s project work, and helps collect needed internal information for PR submissions.
• Anticipates client needs, acts as a listening ear to the client, asks insightful questions and engages on all topics, regardless of INDUSTRY’s project opportunities

Requirements:

• Must have an entrepreneurial spirit and strategic intellect.
• Bachelors degree or equivalent industry experience.
• 5+ years of account management experience, preferably within the design industry on the agency side.
• Demonstrated ability to manage projects and to make decisions with minimal guidelines and oversight. Must be able to establish timelines and agendas, actively and accurately monitor progress to plan, drive corrective action meetings, and meet deliverable, budget, and deadline targets.
• Very strong organizational skills and the ability to effectively manage multiple conflicting priorities in a rapidly changing environment.
• Strong communication skills (speaking, listening, and writing) and the ability to make both formal and informal presentations to groups of varying sizes.
• Communication confidence, with the ability to lead conversations and have difficult discussions with both design and client teams. Understands what conversations should be done in person, face-to-face, or via email.
• Strong team building skills and the ability to provide meaningful and effective feedback and guidance to a variety of creative professionals.
• Proficiency in Microsoft office suite (Word, Powerpoint primarily) as well as Keynote and Adobe Illustrator. Must be familiar with file sharing protocols such as FTP, Dropbox, etc.
• This position requires occasional domestic and international travel. Depending on projects and roles, travel may be more frequent and longer in duration.

*INCLUDE RESUME AND COVER LETTER WITH APPLICATION