Art and Production Director

About the Role:

The Art and Production Director manages and leads a production design team responsible for creating, adapting, and maintaining high-quality sales and marketing materials across the organization. This role connects brand strategy, creative execution, sales enablement, and production operations to efficiently translate the evolving brand into practical, effective materials that support bankers and the business. The role leads people and production operations, manages creative request intake and workflow, translates brand direction across the sales-material ecosystem, and uses production data to improve efficiency, scalability, responsiveness, creative quality, and brand consistency. This role will report to the Creative Director.

- Manage, lead, coach, and develop a production design team responsible for executing sales and marketing creative.
- Establish expectations for creative quality, productivity, responsiveness, and adherence to brand standards.
- Leads print production by managing mechanical file setup, prepress workflows, press checks, and quality control to ensure accurate, high-quality execution of all printed materials.
- Prioritize and assign work based on business impact, designer capacity, skills, deadlines, and production requirements.
- Balance team workloads, address capacity constraints and bottlenecks, and provide clear creative and production direction.
- Manage the intake, prioritization, assignment, workflow, review, approval, and completion of sales creative requests.
- Establish scalable production standards and workflows that improve speed, quality, visibility, and service to internal partners.
- Maintain visibility into production volume, capacity, status, aging, recurring demand, and resource utilization.
- Partner with Marketing, Sales Enablement, Creative, and other business line stakeholders to clarify requirements and prioritize work.
- Translate brand themes, campaigns, visual systems, and positioning into practical sales and marketing materials.
- Lead the rollout, adaptation, versioning, resizing, and extension of creative concepts across products, channels, audiences, and sales applications.
- Analyze production data to identify demand patterns, repetitive work, bottlenecks, and opportunities for templating and process improvement.
- Maintain current, organized, version-controlled production templates, design libraries, specifications, documentation, and finished assets that meet brand, quality, technical, and business requirements.
- Maintains expertise in Adobe Creative Cloud's embedded AI tools and evolving production technologies, applying them strategically to strengthen workflows, accelerate execution, improve accuracy, and maximize team productivity.
- Demonstrates compliance with all bank regulations for assigned job function and applies to designated job responsibilities – knowledge may be gained through coursework and on-the-job training. Keeps up to date on regulation changes.
- Follows all Bank policies and procedures, compliance regulations, and completes all required annual or job-specific training.
- Maintain a working knowledge of Bank's written policies and procedures regarding Bank Secrecy Act, Regulation CC, Regulation E, Bank Security and other regulations as applicable to this job description.
- May be asked to coach, mentor, or train others and teach coursework as subject matter expert.
- Actively learns, demonstrates, and fosters the Columbia corporate culture in all actions and words.
- Takes personal initiative and is a positive example for others to emulate.
- Embraces our vision to become “Business Bank of Choice”.
- May perform other duties as assigned.

About You:

- Bachelor's degree in graphic design, visual communications, and digital media, or other related field required
- 5+ years of experience in art direction and production, preferably within a corporate or financial services environment required
- 10+ years of experience as a Graphic/Production Designer or other relevant design experience required
- 5+ years of experience managing a production design team required
- Proven ability to develop brand-aligned visual strategies and maintain brand integrity across digital, mobile, print, and environmental channels within a highly regulated financial environment.
- Strong ability to manage, lead, and develop a production design team.
- Expertise in translating complex financial concepts and marketing strategies into clear, accessible, audience-centered visual communications.
- Proven experience leading creative projects and collaborating with Marketing, Sales Enablement, Legal, Compliance, and creative partners to deliver high-quality, accurate, and compliant materials.
- Extensive knowledge of financial-industry accessibility, regulatory, compliance, and production-quality requirements, supported by exceptional attention to detail and refined aesthetic judgment.
- Advanced proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, including Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, Firefly, Adobe Express, and Premiere, with professional-level photo retouching, video editing, and post-production capabilities.
- Strong production-operations capability, including creative request intake, prioritization, resource allocation, workflow management, quality review, approval, and delivery under tight deadlines and budget constraints.
- Proficiency in developing and maintaining scalable production templates, design libraries, specifications, documentation, and organized, version-controlled assets.
- Ability to analyze production and creative-performance data to improve resource allocation, turnaround, campaign effectiveness, process efficiency, and return on investment.
- Strong experience in both prepress and press environments, managing technical production requirements, conducting press checks, and ensuring the highest standards of print quality and consistency.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft 365 applications.
- Knowledge of web and digital content creation that supports integrated marketing, print, video, and animation projects.
- Occasional travel may be required.

The pay range for this role is $130,000 - $170,000.

The pay rate for the selected candidate is dependent upon a variety of non-discriminatory factors including, but not limited to, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, education, and geographic location. The role may be eligible for performance-based incentive compensation, and those details will be provided during the recruitment process.

Primary Location: Ability to work fully onsite at posted location(s).

1000 Bellevue Way NE Bellevue WA 98004

Our Benefits:

We are proud to offer a competitive total rewards package including base wages and comprehensive benefits.

We offer eligible associates comprehensive healthcare coverage (medical, dental, and vision plans), a 401(k)-retirement savings plan with employer match for qualifying associate contributions, an employee assistance program, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition assistance, mental health resources, identity theft protection, legal support, auto and home insurance, pet insurance, access to an online discount marketplace, and paid vacation, sick days, volunteer days, and holidays. Benefit eligibility begins the first day of the month following the date of hire for associates who are regularly scheduled to work at least thirty hours weekly.

Our Commitment to Diversity:

Columbia Bank is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to employing, engaging, and developing a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, protected veteran status, disability, or any other applicable protected status or characteristics. If you require an accommodation to complete the application or interview(s), please let us know by email: [email protected] .

To Staffing and Recruiting Agencies:

Our posted job opportunities are only intended for individuals seeking employment at Columbia Bank. Columbia Bank does not accept unsolicited resumes or applications from agencies and Columbia Bank will not be responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resume submissions. Staffing and recruiting agencies are not authorized to submit profiles, applications, or resumes to this site or to any Columbia Bank employee and any such submissions will be considered unsolicited unless requested directly by a member of the Talent Acquisition team.