Art Director

Join us to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians

At Neo, we’re on a mission to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians. Life at a rapidly scaling tech startup isn’t for everyone. It’s complex, fast-paced, high-pressure, but also incredibly fulfilling. Since its founding in 2019, Neo has gained incredible traction and is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Canada.

• #1 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 for 2023, 2024, and 2025 — the first company ever to achieve a three-peat at the top!

• #1 Fastest Growing Company in Canada for 2024 by Globe & Mail

• Top-ranked mobile apps and credit cards

• Team of 500+ people

• 1M+ customers

• 10K+ retail partners
  

Neo is building one of Canada’s most ambitious financial brands — and this is the creative role at the centre of it. As Art Director, you’ll shape how millions of Canadians experience Neo: from the first impression in a paid ad, through every campaign touchpoint, to the feeling of opening the app for the first time. The canvas is wide: Brand campaigns, OOH, experiential, web, in-product, and social, and everything inbetween. Everything from static surfaces to nuanced animations and tactile physical design. The stakes are real.

This role exists to translate strategic goals into visually compelling concepts, balancing brand consistency with breakthrough creativity that builds awareness and drives growth.

Reporting to the Creative Director, you'll be the key contributor in elevating the Neo brand through creative strategy and visual design. You’ll lead and collaborate with our content/writing team and Visual Designers. You play a critical role in executing the Creative Director's vision, ensuring all visual storytelling and design aligns with broader brand and business objectives, while also contributing hands-on design work and maintaining balance between leadership and execution.

You'll work closely with the Director, Creative Design & Operations to ensure project intake, resourcing, and delivery meet the requirements of the brief — including identifying gaps before work begins so the creative team is always set up to succeed.

• Partner with the Creative Director, ensuring design and advertising concepts align with strategic objectives and brand direction.

• Think holistically about how the brand shows up across every surface of the business, ensuring the visual language and narrative remains coherent and intentional across the full customer journey.

• Contribute fresh ideas that strengthen campaigns while staying true to the Creative Director's vision.

• Present and clearly articulate design concepts and campaign ideas to stakeholders and senior leadership, providing rationale and ensuring alignment with business goals.

• Collaborate closely with the Copywriter to develop integrated campaign ideas where words and visuals reinforce each other to drive engagement, awareness, and growth.

• Translate briefs from product, growth, and brand teams into compelling design concepts and visual storytelling that resonate with audiences.

• Concept and storyboard motion design ideas rapidly, iterating at speed to explore and validate animated campaign executions before moving to production.

• Partner with the Director, Creative Design & Operations to uphold briefing standards, flagging gaps before work begins and ensuring the team has everything needed to execute properly.

• Review incoming briefs critically, challenging anything incomplete or ambiguous before it enters the production pipeline.

• Act as a quality gate on brief intake, protecting team efficiency and creative output by ensuring no project proceeds without a clear, well-scoped brief.

• Provide creative leadership and mentorship to Graphic Designers, setting direction, reviewing work, and helping them grow professionally while maintaining high-quality design standards.

• Champion a culture of exploration and iteration. Introduce processes that encourage rapid prototyping and multiple design solves over prolonged refinement of a single direction, ensuring the team always brings options to the table.

• Elevate team output through process, not just feedback — build workflows and rituals that increase creative velocity, reduce bottlenecks, and enable designers to produce more, faster, without sacrificing quality.

• Balance creative leadership with direct hands-on design contribution across campaigns and channels.

• Oversee final review of all visual deliverables, ensuring work is polished, consistent, and error-free before launch.

• Ensure Neo's visual identity system remains distinctive, scalable, and consistently applied across all brand touchpoints.

• Push the creative envelope for compelling visual and narrative execution that builds brand awareness and drives growth.

• Collaborate with Neo's Lead Product Designer & Design Systems team to scale Neo’s current brand system into a comprehensive, universal library of design elements — components, typography, motion, and visual patterns — that work together as a flexible, channel-agnostic system.

• Ensure the design system is built for scale, enabling the broader creative team to execute efficiently and consistently across every touchpoint without sacrificing creative flexibility.

• 6–10+ years of design experience, including at least 3-5 years in an Art Director or senior creative lead role.

• A strong portfolio demonstrating campaign concepting, brand identity, and multi-channel execution.

• Proven ability to translate strategy into visual concepts that drive awareness and growth.

• Experience managing and mentoring designers, with a track record of elevating team output and craft.

• Excellent collaboration skills — you work in lockstep with copywriters, creative directors, and cross-functional partners.

• A sharp eye for detail and a high bar for quality, consistency, and error-free execution.

• Experience reviewing and stress-testing creative briefs; you know what a good brief looks like and won't let a bad one derail a project.

• Hands-on with design tools (Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and experienced working across digital, social, OOH, and print.

• Thrives in a fast-paced environment where speed and quality both matter.

• Motion design background with demonstrated experience in storyboarding and fast iteration on animated concepts.

• Exceptional contemporary typography — you push the limits of typographic design while preserving legibility and clarity; a portfolio with modern editorial typographic direction is a significant plus.

• Experience scaling brand systems into comprehensive, flexible design libraries that work cohesively across all channels and touchpoints.

• Fintech, financial services, or brand-first company experience.

The people who thrive at Neo are resourceful, growth-oriented, and driven to win. We hold ourselves to high standards because we’re on a mission that matters: to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians. As individuals and as a team, we constantly challenge ourselves and each other to raise the bar and deliver exceptional experiences for our customers. Our commitment to customer success drives everything we do, from building world-class products to providing exceptional support at every step of their journey. If this resonates with you, keep reading.

We trust, respect, and support each other. This means honest conversations, constructive input, and empowering each other to move fast and think big. You’ll be surrounded by people who push you to be your best. We primarily collaborate in person across our Calgary, Winnipeg, and Toronto offices, where ideas move quickly and teams build momentum together. As we continue to scale and evolve, we’re looking for builders, innovators, and problem solvers who thrive on challenge–people who would rather blaze a trail through uncertainty than follow a well-paved path.

At Neo, ownership is part of how we think and operate. For select roles, equity participation reinforces that mindset by giving employees a direct stake in the company’s long-term success. Regardless of role, every team member is expected to think like an owner and make decisions that move the business forward.

We believe in equal opportunity and are committed to creating an inclusive climate where everyone can thrive. Customers trust us with their finances, so successful candidates for this position will be required to undergo a security screening, including a criminal records check and a credit check.

By continuing with your application, you agree to the Candidate Privacy Notice, which guides how we process your personal information for the purpose of your application.

Neo Financial leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to reinforce our candidate evaluation process, including the initial assessment of applications and screening of candidates. These tools support our recruitment team; however, all final hiring decisions are made by humans and are not based exclusively on automated processing. If you require further information regarding our data processing practices, please contact us.

We are hiring for an open, vacant position.