Who are we?
Design First delivers personalized luxury interior and furniture design to India’s discerning homeowners and corporates. Led by prolific, seasoned luxury brand builders, internationally trained designers, world-class professionals and passionate, steadfast teams of turnkey project execution specialists. We seek excellence in design and are committed to bringing back trust and excitement in the design process.
Head Office: Marine Drive, South Mumbai
Operational Office: Kanjurmarg, Central Mumbai
To know more about Design First, visit www.designfirst.co.in and https://instagram.com/designfirstofficial
We are a lean team of high performing go-getters who take ownership of their roles in the organization. Debates and discussions are an important part of our culture and we encourage young minds to bring unique perspectives to the conversations. Most importantly, we love solving problems.
If you think you’re cut out from a similar cloth, we’d encourage you to apply for this role.
The Role:
The Brand Strategist / Account Manager is the most senior creative and communication hire in this team. You will own the brand strategy for Design First — shaping its positioning, voice, content direction and communication standards across every touchpoint.
You will lead the in-house team, manage external creative partners and serve as the primary strategic partner to the Marketing Manager and Founder on all brand communication decisions.
What would you be required to do?
Brand Strategy & Architecture
- Own and evolve the brand positioning and communication architecture for Design First — ensuring consistency across every customer touchpoint.
- Build and maintain the Design First Brand Voice Document — defining the tone, language, visual principles and communication standards for the brand.
- Define quarterly content pillars, editorial direction and platform strategy aligned with the Design First audience.
- Translate Design First's design philosophy — the project journeys, the Carlo Scarpa inspiration and the end-to-end design ownership approach — into brand language the team can execute.
- Identify areas where brand communication is inconsistent and present clear, evidence-backed recommendations for improvement.
Creative Partner Management
- Manage all external creative and production partners — briefing, reviewing output, holding to deadlines and maintaining brand standards.
- Own the creative brief process for all campaign work — ensuring partners receive clear, precise direction and return work that meets Design First's standards.
- Review and approve all third-party creative output before it is published or distributed under the Design First brand.
Team Leadership & Output Quality
- Brief, direct and quality-review all output from the Content Writer, Graphic Designer and Performance Marketing team.
- Run structured weekly reviews of all content being published across channels — assessing quality, brand alignment and platform fit.
- Set and enforce quality benchmarks across all brand communication and creative output.
- Co-interview and provide input on all new creative and content hires as the team expands.
Communication Systems & Workflow
- Build and manage the internal approval workflow, ensuring every piece of content passes through a defined review and sign-off process before publication.
- Own campaign timelines from brief initiation through asset delivery, ensuring projects are documented, tracked and delivered without requiring Founder follow-up.
- Build and present monthly Founder review decks, providing an honest assessment of what is working, what is not and what the next priority should be.
- Coordinate the Content Writer, Graphic Designer and Performance Marketer & Digital Marketing Team across overlapping campaign timelines without output bottlenecks.
Founder & Marketing Manager Interface
- Serve as the primary strategic and creative partner to the Marketing Manager and Founder on all brand communication decisions.
- Prepare monthly brand reviews covering output quality, campaign performance and strategic direction.
- Manage the creative feedback loop: receive direction, brief the team and present recommendations and work back with clear reasoning.
What skills we are looking for?
Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in Anthropology preferred
- MBA or postgraduate qualification in Marketing, Brand Management, Communications or equivalent.
- Formal qualification in a design, editorial or creative discipline is an additional advantage.
Experience:
- 14–16 years in brand management, brand strategy, or senior account leadership — with a career demonstrating deepening strategic responsibility.
- Has managed multiple brands or brand lines simultaneously — the ability to hold distinct voices without cross-contamination is a specific and testable skill.
- Has built or significantly shaped a brand communication system — not managed campaigns within one.
- Documented experience leading creative teams and managing external partners simultaneously.
- Has worked through a brand maturity moment — where the standard of communication needed to be raised and they led that change.
- Strong familiarity with luxury goods, luxury interiors, architecture or luxury lifestyle categories.
Tools & Platforms:
- Presentation software: Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides — mandatory for Founder review decks and client-facing materials.
- Project management: Notion, Asana, or equivalent — for managing briefs, timelines and content calendars across two brands.
- Content scheduling: Meta Business Suite, Later, or equivalent — for overseeing social output and campaign timing.
- Analytics: GA4, Meta Business Suite reporting, Google Ads — sufficient fluency to review, challenge and contextualize performance data.
- Collaborative tools: Google Workspace — for briefs, brand voice documentation and team coordination.
Skills & Qualities:
- Exceptional written communication — writes and speaks with the precision and restraint both brands require.
- Exceptional written communication, with the ability to write and speak with precision, clarity and sophistication.
- Strong aesthetic intelligence and a deep understanding of luxury branding, design-led storytelling and premium customer communication.
- Strategic range, able to hold the long-term brand vision while managing weekly content and campaign execution.
- The authority to say no, to a brief that is wrong, to creative that falls short, or to a direction that compromises brand standards.
- Composed under pressure, as this role carries final accountability for the quality of everything the brand publishes.
- Emotional maturity, ownership and discretion, the non-negotiable operating standard for anyone working in a founder-led luxury environment.
Personality – What this Role Requires:
- Calm and polished under pressure — interfaces directly with the Founder and with UHNI clients; composure is non-negotiable.
- Emotionally intelligent — reads rooms, handles feedback with maturity, manages the creative team without ego.
- Discreet — works with confidential client projects, sensitive business information and Founder-level communication across two organizations.
- Aesthetically aware — has a genuine and informed point of view on what looks and sounds like quality.
- Highly accountable — takes ownership from brief to output without requiring follow-up.
