Job Description

The San Francisco Chronicle has an immediate opening for a deputy creative director to lead the visual storytelling and design of the newsroom’s most ambitious digital journalism.

The Chronicle’s design team is a multidisciplinary group of designers, developers, graphic artists and graphics reporters. We collaborate frequently and interchangeably with the Chronicle’s data team (which specializes in data analysis and takes the lead in data visualization) and the Hearst DevHub (a centralized group of developers and engineers that manages a shared codebase and creates templates, tooling, original reporting and other design and development for newsrooms throughout the company). We also work in close concert with the visuals and investigative teams. (Both were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2023.)

At the nexus of content creation and production, we play a central role in the newsroom’s most important work. We provide design direction, make UX improvements to small enterprise projects and steer teams toward alternative story forms that may communicate their reporting better than a traditional news article. We work with the audience team to balance our storytelling and innovation goals with the technical and design best practices that maximize SEO and the user experience. From ideation to final deployment, we also project manage, design and develop the newsroom’s largest projects.

The ideal candidate is a skilled journalist, can communicate to our audience effectively and can take advantage of the latest technologies. You should be a strong collaborator who can draw out innovative ideas from a diverse group of colleagues while keeping work on schedule. You should have the technical design and development skills to make or to teach others to make ideas come to life. You should have an experimental temperament and want to push what we’re capable of, while being able to bring to life the brass tacks journalism that is our bread and butter. You should have a growth mindset and be unafraid to keep learning since the pace of technological change in our industry continues to accelerate. You must be able to ask for help when you need it. Finally, you must be creative.

Candidates must be willing to relocate to San Francisco to work in a hybrid workplace, where employees are expected to be in the office three days a week. The deputy creative director will report directly to Alex K. Fong, creative director of the San Francisco Chronicle and vice president of the Society for News Design.

QUALIFICATIONS

• At least five years of experience working in a newsroom, with some of that time as one of the lead or senior digital designers/developers in a prior workplace
• A portfolio of digital projects that demonstrate your ability to conceive and execute complex storytelling through both design and development
• Skills with Adobe Suite, specifically Photoshop, Illustrator and AfterEffects
• Skills with non-coding data visualization tools such as DataWrapper or Tableau

EXPERIENCE/SKILLS WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE

• Prior experience managing other employees
• Design thinking backed up by strong news design, visual design and/or UX practice
• Frontend frameworks such as Gatsby or Next.js. (Backend skills are a plus, but not a focus of this position.)
• Command line/terminal
• ArchieML
• Node
• Package managers like NPM and/or Yarn
• Animation and related apps and libraries, such as AfterEffects, GSAP and/or Framer Motion
• Information graphics design; data scraping, analysis and visualization; and related apps and libraries, such as AI2HTML, R, Python, Pandas and/or D3
• Mapping and/or cartography and related apps and libraries, such as QGIS and/or MapLibre
• Version control with Git
• Prettier and/or Linting
• Video and related apps and libraries such as Final Cut and FFMPEG
• Illustration via Procreate or other kinds of media
• 3d via Blender and/or Three.js
• Gaming technologies such as Unity or other technologies like AR and photogrammetry to craft innovative journalism projects that surprise and delight
• SEO
• Social media
• Interest in improving workflows and culture
• Some ability to guide print design as needed

It’s impossible to tick all the boxes listed above, nor do we expect you to be equally skilled in all of them. What we’re looking for is a leader with a good combination of skills that complements the expertise already present in the Chronicle newsroom, and a willingness to grow and to collaborate.

To apply, please send us a resume, cover letter and five work examples. If what you contributed to a project is not immediately clear, please include a sentence explaining what role you played.

In accordance with applicable law, Hearst is required to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role if hired in California. The reasonable estimate is between $95,000 and $115,000. Please note this information is specific to those hired in San Francisco. If this role is open to candidates outside of San Francisco, the salary range would be aligned to that specific location. A final decision on the successful candidate’s starting salary will be based on a number of permissible, non-discriminatory factors, including but not limited to skills and experience, training, certifications, and education.

About The San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle ( ) is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast. Acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 2000, The San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young and has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. The staff won ONA Online Journalism Awards for General Excellence in 2020 and for Breaking News coverage in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Follow us on Twitter at@SFChronicle .

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To apply, please send us a resume, cover letter and five work examples. If what you contributed to a project is not immediately clear, please include a sentence explaining what role you played.

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