Future Position: AI Craft Director

About this role

Please note that we will never request payment or bank account information at any stage of the recruitment process. As we continue to grow our teams, we urge you to be cautious of fraudulent job postings or recruitment activities that misuse our company name and information. Please protect your personal information during any recruitment process. While Monks may contact potential candidates via LinkedIn, all applications must be submitted through our official website (monks.com/careers).

This posting is not tied to a current open role, but is an opportunity to join our talent pool for future positions. By applying, you’ll be considered as opportunities that align with your experience that become available.

The Role

We are makers. We create because we are curious, and we believe that the best way to prove an idea works is to make it real.

As the Craft Innovation Lead, you are a defining voice of our new breed of cross-disciplinary innovators. Nested deeply within our core Content Studio offering, you sit at the exact intersection of traditional filmmaking craft, cutting-edge AI technology, and immersive system architecture.

Reporting directly to the Head of Creative, you are a hybrid visionary with a proven background in visual effects, animation, design, and film direction. You understand the unbreakable rules of color, composition, pacing, and character development—and you know how to apply those traditional standards to AI-first workflows and XR environments.

You will not just build the future; you will sell it. This is a highly strategic, client-facing role. You will proactively identify opportunities, rapidly prototype "impossible" ideas, and present these new ways of making directly to Google stakeholders. You are the ultimate bridge between our creative idea generators, our technical platform builders, and our clients, proving that strategically sound, tech-enabled creative thinking can achieve the "Google Grade" faster and with unprecedented visual fidelity.

Key Responsibilities

Craft Meets Compute

• Uphold the Fundamentals: Bring uncompromising directorial and design sensibilities—including lighting, lens choice, color theory, editing, and character development—to AI-generated and tech-enabled content. Ensure that "machine speed" never compromises human taste.

• The New Ways of Making: Aggressively experiment with and integrate generative AI, real-time rendering, procedural generation, and AR/VR/XR technologies into the Studio workflow. You respect the legacy of traditional production while actively rewriting its rulebook.

Proactive Prototyping & Client Partnership

• Identify & Prototype: Do not wait for a brief. Proactively identify brand and product initiatives where emerging tech can be leveraged. You will act as a rapid-prototyping engine, building proofs-of-concept that demonstrate net-new visual treatments or content models.

• Client-Facing Leadership: Serve as a frontline strategic partner to Google clients. You must confidently present and demystify complex technical workflows, translating "how the technology works" into "why it matters for their business and brand."

• Net-New Conceptualization: Dream up and execute ideas that are only possible through new technologies, moving beyond "making things faster" to "making things that have never been made before."

Industry Pulse & Studio Innovation

• The Cultural Radar: Maintain a relentless pulse on the industry. You are expected to be deeply plugged into the bleeding edge of creative and technological innovations, constantly bringing outside inspiration, emerging tools, and new methodologies into the agency.

• Cross-Disciplinary Orchestration: Act as the strategic translator between the Creative teams (the "Idea") and the Tech/Dev teams (the "Architecture").

• Teacher of Curiosity: You will not hoard knowledge. As you develop new methodologies, you are responsible for sharing these workflows, training the broader Studio team, and elevating the agency's collective capability.

Qualifications

• The Craft Pedigree: 10+ years of deep, hands-on experience in high-end craft disciplines: Visual Effects (VFX), 3D Animation, Character Development/Animation, Motion Design, or Live-Action Film Directing.

• AI & Immersive Fluency: Deep, demonstrable expertise in generative AI tools, real-time engines, and spatial computing (VR, AR, XR). You must understand the underlying mechanics of these tools, not just how to prompt them.

• The Innovator's Mindset: A portfolio that demonstrates a relentless pursuit of the "new." We want to see projects where you broke the software, combined disparate tools, or invented a workflow to achieve a creative vision.

• Executive Client Presence: Exceptional communication and presentation skills. You must be highly comfortable commanding a room of senior clients, successfully pitching proactive prototypes and non-traditional executions.

• Technical Literacy: While you do not need to be a backend developer, you must possess a strong understanding of technical architecture and how tech platforms interact with creative pipelines.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Proactive Client Adoption: The successful delivery of proactive pilot projects and prototypes that unlock entirely new creative briefs or workstreams from the client.

• Workflow Innovation: Successfully developing and integrating net-new, tech-enabled production workflows into the Studio that measurably reduce production time without sacrificing the "Google Grade."

• Craft Quality: Elevating the aesthetic output of AI-generated and XR work to establish a new internal and external benchmark for tech-enabled creativity.

• Cross-Team Integration: Measurable improvement in the speed and fluency of collaboration between the Dev/Tech teams and the traditional Creative Studio.

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About Monks

Monks is the global, digital-first, data-driven, unitary operating brand of S4 Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and…