Interior Design Director (Hospitality)

Salary: Up to £70,000, dependent on experience

Location: ​M​idlands

Working pattern: Hybrid

Software: AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Creative Suite

Sector: Hospitality and F&B

About the studio

This is a consultancy that has been shaping how people eat, drink, and stay for close to thirty years. Bars, restaurants, pubs, hotels, and the odd project that defies category. If you have been out somewhere memorable in the last decade, there is a fair chance they had a hand in it.​ What makes them unusual is that strategy, brand, and interiors all sit under one roof. The insight team and the design team are not separated by a wall or a handover document. Concepts are built on real research about who the customer is and what the operator needs, which means the work has a reason to exist beyond looking good in a portfolio.

About the role

They are looking for an Interior Design Director to own the creative vision across the UK interiors portfolio and lead the team that delivers it.

This is deliberately weighted towards creative leadership rather than technical delivery. You will be setting design direction, holding the quality bar, and being the senior creative voice in client meetings. The technical drawing packages and site resolution have their own home in the studio, which frees you up to do the thing you are actually best at.

The other half of the job is people. There is an established, capable team here who need someone to develop them, argue for their work, and raise the standard around them. If you have reached the point where mentoring other designers is as satisfying as designing yourself, this will suit you.

Your days will look something like this​...

• Lead the creative direction of hospitality and F&B interiors projects from first concept through to opening
• Present and defend design thinking directly to clients, from operators and developers through to brand owners
• Mentor and develop a team of around seven interior designers across all levels
• Work alongside the brand and strategy teams so that the space and the brand tell the same story
• Own design quality across the UK studio, and be the person who decides when something is not good enough yet
• Partner with the technical design lead to make sure ambitious concepts survive contact with a building site
• Contribute creative thinking to pitches and help shape how the studio wins work
• Collaborate with the Middle East studios on international projects

You might be our perfect match if...

• You have deep, specific experience in F&B interiors, not just hospitality broadly
• Your portfolio shows concept-led thinking and spaces with a genuine point of view
• You have led a design team before, or you are an Associate Director ready for the step up
• You can hold your nerve in a client meeting when a good idea is under pressure
• You understand that the best design is the one that works commercially for the operator
• You are comfortable in a multidisciplinary studio where brand and strategy people have opinions about your work
• You are based in or around the West Midlands, or genuinely want to be

Why this one​...

• Creative ownership of an established portfolio rather than starting from nothing
• A team already in place, so you are leading rather than building from scratch
• Strategy and brand in-house, which means better briefs and fewer arbitrary client hunches
• International project exposure without leaving Birmingham
• A studio with three decades of work behind it and a name people in the sector know