Location: Raleigh area
Schedule: Hybrid (3-4 days/wk onsite)
Senior Surface Design Manager
We are seeking an experienced and highly creative Senior Surface Design Manager to lead the development of original prints, patterns, artwork, and surface design across apparel and lifestyle collections. This role will help establish and evolve a distinctive, ownable visual point of view that feels fresh, feminine, joyful, and commercially relevant.
The ideal candidate is both a hands-on artist and an experienced design leader—someone who can create exceptional original artwork while mentoring designers, elevating creative quality, and building a thoughtful print assortment. This position requires deep experience in textile and surface design, print and pattern development, color, seasonal trends, and production-ready artwork.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead seasonal print, pattern, color, and surface-design development across apparel and gift categories.
- Create original artwork through hand painting, drawing, digital illustration, and other relevant techniques.
- Develop seamless repeats, border prints, engineered layouts, placement artwork, embroidery concepts, and alternate colorways.
- Research emerging trends in print, color, art, interiors, fashion, and culture, translating them into customer-focused print stories.
- Build seasonal inspiration, color direction, artwork concepts, and print-development presentations.
- Create a balanced assortment of statement prints, florals, geometrics, conversational prints, stripes, plaids, and supporting patterns.
- Prepare accurate, production-ready artwork with clear repeat, scale, placement, technique, and color information.
- Review strike-offs, lab dips, embroidery, and production submissions for color, quality, scale, and aesthetic alignment.
- Manage timelines and approvals to support on-time product development and delivery.
- Manage, mentor, and provide creative direction to junior and mid-level designers.
- Partner with design, product development, sourcing, and leadership teams to align print development with seasonal priorities.
- Collaborate with domestic and overseas vendors to communicate artwork requirements and resolve development challenges.
- Maintain an organized artwork archive and help establish efficient seasonal print-development processes.
- Ensure artwork is original, appropriately licensed, or cleared for commercial use.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design, Surface Design, Fashion Design, Illustration, Fine Arts, or a related field.
- 7–10+ years of experience in textile, print, pattern, or surface design, ideally within women’s apparel or a print-driven lifestyle brand.
- Experience mentoring, managing, or providing creative direction to other designers.
- A strong portfolio demonstrating original artwork, seamless repeats, color development, and artwork applied to finished products.
- Advanced proficiency in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop; Procreate experience is a plus.
- Strong knowledge of print repeats, color separation, textile-printing methods, artwork preparation, and production requirements.
- Exceptional eye for color, composition, scale, balance, and detail.
- Strong communication, presentation, organization, and project-management skills.
- Experience working with overseas vendors is preferred.
Portfolio Requirements
Please submit a portfolio featuring original hand-created and digital artwork, seamless repeat patterns, florals and geometrics, colorway development, border or placement artwork, and examples of artwork applied to finished products.
