Director of Interior Design, Hospitality

OVERVIEW

Our client is an award-winning multidisciplinary architecture and design practice known for creating highly considered hospitality, residential, and mixed-use environments across the United States. Their diverse portfolio includes boutique hotels, members’ clubs, food & beverage, wellness destinations, luxury residences, and private homes, all unified by a holistic design approach that integrates architecture, interiors and planning.

They are seeking a Design Director to join one of the firm’s largest studios, providing creative leadership across a portfolio concentrated in hospitality and large-scale development projects.

This is a highly collaborative leadership role suited to a creative design leader who thrives on establishing vision, mentoring high-performing teams, and steering projects from concept through Design Development with a discerning eye for detail and narrative. The successful candidate will work in close partnership with the Principals, maintaining design excellence studio-wide, while playing an active role in shaping the practice’s creative direction and long-term growth.

RESPONSBILITIES

Design leadership

• Lead the creative vision for hospitality, mixed-use development, and select luxury residential projects, guiding design from concept through Design Development while ensuring a cohesive and compelling design narrative.
• Establish project narratives, conceptual frameworks, space planning strategies, and overall design direction that respond to each client’s goals while reflecting the firm’s design philosophy.
• Own project timelines, proactively managing schedules and ensuring milestones and deadlines are consistently met.
• Guide multidisciplinary design teams through the creative process using sketches, precedent imagery, concept boards, material studies, iterative design reviews, and ongoing design dialogue.
• Review plans, presentations, renderings, material palettes, and other project deliverables to ensure the highest level of design quality, consistency, and attention to detail.
• Partner closely with adjacent studio leadership to translate creative vision into successful project execution, balancing design excellence with project scope, schedule, and constructability.
• Present design concepts, creative strategies, and design rationale to clients, consultants, and senior leadership with confidence and clarity.

Studio and People Leadership

• Mentor architects and designers by providing thoughtful design direction, constructive feedback, and opportunities for professional growth while fostering a highly collaborative studio environment.
• Support business development efforts by contributing to proposal strategy, interview presentations, conceptual studies, and design visioning for new pursuits.
• Champion a collaborative, design-driven studio culture, helping to establish and uphold the creative standards that define the firm’s hospitality portfolio.

SKILLS & REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Architecture or Interior Design.
• Senior level experience within leading architecture and/or interior design practices.
• Significant experience leading hospitality and development projects through concept and Design Development, with additional luxury residential or mixed-use development experience preferred.
• Has a point of view and creative vision to and lead and inspire multidisciplinary design teams.
• Strong conceptual design, sketching, presentation, and communication skills.
• Experience mentoring architects and designers while maintaining design quality across multiple concurrent projects.
• Ability to balance creativity with organization, collaboration, and project deadlines.
• Proficiency in softwares and analog approaches to design exploration and presentation including hand sketching and planning, Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD, modeling programs. Revit proficiency is beneficial but not required.
• Available to travel periodically for project and client meetings.