About this Senior Designer role at AKQA

AKQA · Onsite · San Francisco

At AKQA (part of WPP), we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital services and applications that capture the imagination, delivering impressive returns for our clients.

Creatives at AKQA apply artistry and craftsmanship to strategic insight to create and bring to life beautiful ideas that move the world. Skilled storytellers and conceptors, they work in a multidisciplinary environment to develop labors of love that delight customers and deliver results for clients. Designers play essential roles in the strategy, conception, and design of beautiful ideas, products and services, bringing exceptional creative thought and craft output from brief to end user.

We are seeking an experienced Freelance Senior Designer to support one of the most globally recognized consumer brands in the world, a company with an enormous and deeply loyal customer base whose digital products and services touch millions of people every day. This is a meaningful, high-visibility engagement where strong design craft and systems thinking directly shape the experience of a massive, diverse audience. You will bring deep expertise in digital products and services as well as design systems, and you will work within a collaborative, fast-moving team environment. This is a freelance role running from July 2 through September 30, 2026.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Deliver high-quality UI and visual design across digital product surfaces, with a strong grounding in user-centered design principles and a meticulous eye for craft
Contribute to, maintain, and evolve a sophisticated design system, working confidently across components, tokens, patterns, variants, and states with a focus on scalability and consistency
Translate UX direction and wireframes into polished, pixel-precise designs that are both on-brand and highly usable
Develop and deliver high-fidelity prototypes and interactive experiences primarily utilizing Figma
Work both strategically and tactically, weighing tradeoffs and exploring multiple solution concepts across a complex ecosystem of digital products and services
Collaborate closely with UX designers, product managers, strategists, and engineers to ensure design decisions are well-integrated and grounded in user needs
Adept at utilizing AI tools to inform and streamline the design process, from research to prototyping
Contribute to continuously raising the bar for design quality, process, and delivery standards within the engagement

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

A compelling portfolio of distinctive work demonstrating strong design craft across digital products and services, with clear evidence of design systems experience
Expert-level Figma skills, including advanced component management, variables, libraries, and design system architecture
Able to develop simple and elegant design solutions to complex design problems
Comfortable working within a large, complex consumer brand with established visual and design guidelines, and skilled at designing compellingly within those guardrails
Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with experience partnering across UX, product, strategy, and engineering
Excellent written and oral communication skills
Fosters progressive and limitless thinking

Location & Commitment

West Coast based; must be available during Pacific Time working hours
- Monthly travel to client headquarters for collaborative working sessions of a few days at a time
July 2, 2026 through September 30, 2026
40 hours/week
Expected weekly compensation: 2,600 to 3,400

We believe great work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach including required in-office days. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

AKQA is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

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About AKQA

CORE VALUES

Our founding values guide our work and the philosophy of our firm:

Innovation – pioneering ideas combined with the application of technology, to achieve lasting improvements in performance for our clients.

Service – outstanding service to our clients and colleagues, so we retain exceptional people and create trust-based relationships with clients.

Quality – adhere to the highest professional standards and superior quality.

Thought – recommending the best solutions through the most rigorous thinking process.

TEAMWORK

AKQA provides the highest quality ideas and innovation services to clients around the world. Our consistent track-record of results achieved for clients have set our firm apart. Through our focus on our core values, thought-leadership, rigorous delivery, and industry initiatives, AKQA is today one of the world’s most influential companies. Our goal is to become a high-performance environment where the most talented people flourish. With our perfectionist approach, people join AKQA for the opportunity to do the best work of their careers.

We create digital products, services and immersive experiences that are useful, usable, delightful and enjoyed by millions. We employ a rapid ideation and prototyping process that focuses on getting pilots into market quickly, helping clients make a sustained impact, increase their relevance and expand their connection. By embracing a pioneering approach that continues to lead and define the industry, we deliver cohesive blueprints that fulfil audience needs and surpass business goals.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT

AKQA is committed to helping our team develop into the best possible practitioners and to providing them with an unparalleled foundation for their career. We help develop well-rounded professionals acquire leadership skills more quickly than at other organisations. Our employees benefit from the trusted long-term nature of our client relationships as well as the cultural alignment between the client and our own organisation, creating an optimum environment to deliver the work without any compromises.

ORGANISED TO SUCCEED

The core motivation at AKQA is product excellence. Although we are part of WPP, AKQA operates as an independent firm. Organically grown, our team works as a single firm, without geographic division. This means we can bring the best resources from our network to provide solutions for our clients.

In addition to our own Future Lions initiative, we have formed partnerships with many of the world’s leading universities so we can hire their best graduates. We combine youth and energy with maturity and experience to form a community that has a unique diversity of knowledge and exceptional professional judgement.

DEVELOPMENT

In addition to on-the-job training, AKQA offers a menu of training through the AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development. This comprehensive curriculum of formal training is designed to equip our team with the substantive creative, engineering, business acumen, communications, management and analytical skills required to have professionally rewarding careers. AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development courses are taught by leaders in their fields including AKQA’s own senior team and respected external experts.

To maintain the continuous focus on our core values, and provide a clear career path for our team, all of our Managing Directors and Executive Partners are promoted from within AKQA.

All AKQA employees and clients are invited to participate in the AKQA Insight and AKQA Tech.Insight thought leadership programmes. These comprise a series of informative lectures and Q&A sessions with authors, artists, athletes, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who are recognised leaders in their respective disciplines.

DIVERSITY

We believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. We provide our employees with the canvas, tools and confidence to help them advance their careers in a way that best suits them.

SUSTAINABILITY

At AKQA we believe everything a company does should be about taking the responsibility to be respectful towards the community and the environment. We consider community and pro-bono work to be an important commitment of our employees. We encourage our team to devote their skills to a broad range of pro-bono and community activities, working with myriad charitable and not-for-profit organisations. AKQA is part of WPP’s Sustainability initiatives. WPP is ranked no. 49 in an annual round-up of the World’s Greenest Companies.