Creative Director

YouTube Creative Director

Who we are

Four years ago, Dragonfruit set out to bring together some of the most talented visual storytellers, viral video strategists, and big-name clients, to change the way we create and consume on YouTube. The result has been bigger than we could have imagined, having generated over a billion organic views and hundreds of millions of subscribers for creators like MrBeast, Ali Abdaal, Mark Manson, Chris Williamson, Codie Sanchez, and orgs like Y Combinator, e.l.f beauty, WHOOP, ClickUp, Center for Humane Technology and more.

Dragonfruit’s Mission

Dragonfruit exists to help the world’s most important ideas travel farther. We partner with experts, educators, scientists, founders, and creators to turn deep knowledge into media people actually want to watch, share, and act on. In a world where attention is often optimized for noise, we’re building a company that rewards clarity, substance, and human impact, combining creative judgment, production craft, and AI-powered systems to help better information reach more people. Our mission is to build the creative infrastructure for a healthier, more thoughtful internet.

The Role

It’s clear that the YouTube Creative Director is quickly becoming one of the most coveted roles in digital media. At Dragonfruit, they are the lifeblood of the business, spending their days bringing to life our agency’s core product: viral-educational long-form videos.

As a Dragonfruit YouTube Creative Director, you are truly the face of the company, building close 1:1 creative partnerships with our high-profile clients, operating confidently as the primary strategist, artist, and coach behind their YouTube channels.

From competitor research, to brand positioning, art direction, concept ideation, title and thumbnail design, script optimization, final video edit reviews, studying analytics, running A/B tests, and swapping out packaging after publication, you will have the opportunity to create life-changing growth for your clients and their viewers.

Skills and Qualifications

• Proven experience as a YouTube Creative Director, YouTube Strategist, YouTube Producer/Manager or similar role with documented results. You must be able to point to specific channels you personally played a significant role in growing, and say what the subscriber and view numbers looked like when you arrived and when you left
• Taste and strategy, not one or the other. The rare thing we’re looking for is someone who can originate a concept that feels genuinely good and explain why it will perform. A strategist who outsources the creative call, or an art director without growth instincts, will struggle here
• You live, eat, and breathe YouTube. You have a deep understanding of YouTube meta cultures and trends, knowledge of creators across various niches (not just gaming), and a mastery over viral video formats, concepts, titles, thumbnails, scripts and outlines, retention-optimized editing, and YouTube analytics.
• You own the creative relationship with the client. You can articulate and pitch concepts, coach clients on best practices, hold them accountable, disagree with conviction when it matters, and translate feedback cleanly between the client and the creative team. Our clients have strong opinions and high standards, and the CDs who do well here are direct, calm under pressure, and hard to knock off a well-reasoned position.
• You lead the creatives around you. You give clear direction and timely feedback to editors, designers and scriptwriters, and address work that isn’t landing rather than quietly fixing it yourself.
• You read the performance and act on it. You can look at a video’s numbers, form a view on whether packaging or retention is the problem, and change something specific in response.

This Role Is Not For You If

• You want full creative autonomy with no client in the room
• You want to own production logistics and deadlines
• Your expertise sits in a single niche or a single channel
• You’re looking for an on-camera or personal-brand role
• Educational and purpose-driven content isn’t what you want to spend your time making

How the job actually works

Our team is organized into pods. You’ll own the creative for 3 to 5 client accounts, which typically means 12 to 20 long-form videos a month across them, working alongside a YouTube Producer, a Post-Production Manager, video editors, thumbnail designers, and scriptwriters. You’ll …