Open role
CreativeDirector
Space (sp-ce.co) · Remote · Full-time
TL;DR
- —Space, an AI-native brand agency, hiring a remote Creative Director as the fourth chair alongside its three leaders, with no juniors to manage and no status meetings.
- —The machines carry production: 127 agents and 362 workflows map category cliches, generate assets, and handle QA, leaving the human to decide which of forty competent directions is the one.
- —The director presents one recommendation per client, never three, holds the kill switch on any direction they stop believing in, and puts their name on every call they make.
- —There is no spec pitch work, no feedback filtered through an account layer, and no timesheets; compensation is sized to the chair and scoped in the first conversation.
- —Applying is three questions in a short form: one piece you shipped and now hate, the best idea you ever killed, and one thing in culture that makes you jealous.
01
About Space
Space is an AI-native brand agency in New York. Three always-on leaders, 82 on-demand specialists, zero juniors. 127 agents, 362 agentic workflows, 14 tools we built ourselves. We ship brand identities, websites, campaigns, and products for funded companies in weeks: Validere got strategy, a full rebrand, and a new site in 8 weeks, lifted inbound 31%, and closed a $43M Series B on the story. We grow entirely by word of mouth, and we publish our AI rules, our hiring bar, and our pricing logic at sp-ce.co/notes, because an agency that won't tell you where AI stops is telling you it doesn't know.
02
The job
You'll direct creative on client engagements from positioning through launch: identity systems, campaigns, sites, products. The machines carry the production. Our creative intelligence agents hand you a category's every palette, font, and photography cliche on day one, mapped, so you start at the white space instead of spending a week finding it. Image engines produce hundreds of on-brand assets a year inside systems you author. Formatting, QA, status updates: automated, gone.
What's left is everything that was ever the point. Which of forty competent directions is the one. Which convention to break and which to keep. When the work is done versus merely finished. You make those calls, put your name on them, and defend any of them on a client call, because at Space a named human stands behind every sentence and pixel that ships.
03
What you'll do
Lead creative on multiple sprints at once, start to launch, each measured in weeks.
Present one recommendation per client. Sometimes two, when a genuine strategic fork exists. Never three.
Hold the kill switch. When you stop believing in a direction, it dies, even after a client has smiled at it.
Keep a kill list: every direction you rejected, with the reason. When a client asks what else we considered, the answer is the list.
Argue strategy before pixels. When you think the brief is wrong, you take it up with the strategist directly, and sometimes you'll win.
Author the systems our image engines and Brand OS run on, then hand clients tools that stay on-brand without you in the room.
Raise the bar on 82 senior specialists without a single direct report to hide behind.
04
What you won't do
Manage juniors. There are none. Nobody learns the craft on a client's budget here.
Build spec creative to win a pitch. We grow by referral, and the shipped work does the selling. Your weekends stay yours.
Build the sacrificial third option that exists to make your favorite look brave. We wrote publicly about why that ritual insults everyone in the room.
Sit in status meetings. The agents write the status.
Play feedback telephone. Client reactions reach you firsthand, never summarized through an account layer.
Log timesheets or reformat decks. Fixed fees killed the first; the agents killed the second.
Present a moodboard of rented taste. If a reference would work equally well for the client's nearest competitor, it dies in the file.
Wait. The old agency timeline was mostly waiting, and we deleted it.
05
Who you are
Senior. You've led identities and campaigns that shipped and moved a number, ideally for challengers who couldn't outspend anyone.
The owner of a real kill list. You've hated work you shipped and can say exactly why. You've killed work a client loved. Both, ideally.
Fast and unhurried at once. Eight weeks is the timeline because we deleted the waiting. The thinking stays.
Comfortable being the room's verdict. One decision-maker per side is our model, and on creative, you're ours.
Level 4 or above on our published AI Fluency Ladder: models chained, workflows built, outputs QA'd before they ship. You'll reach Level 5 within six months, because the floor here rises.
06
Who you aren't
A creative who needs the pyramid: the bench to delegate to, the account layer to absorb the client, the review chain to dilute the blame.
Someone whose taste is a shopping list. We know the Rimowa. We know the kettle.
Anonymous. Your name goes on the work. If that sentence reads as a threat, it just saved us both a phone screen.
Level 2 on the ladder: someone who ships whatever the model returns. That's worse than not using AI at all, and we said so in print.
07
The deal
Compensation is senior, sized to the fourth chair, and scoped in the first conversation, before you've invested anything beyond three answers. The role is remote; Space is based in New York, and the work is based wherever you're sharpest. You'd work directly alongside Nathan Roth (co-founder and CEO, a 6x CMO, the one behind Hinge's "Designed to be Deleted"), Sarah Masel (strategy for startups and for Google, Chase, and Goldman Sachs), and Haynes David (ex-Red Antler partner whose client work spans the NBA, AllTrails, and Eight Sleep). No layer between you and any of them, or between you and the client.
Two more things most agencies won't put in writing. Every case study we publish names its makers, so the work compounds into your reputation and not only ours. And you'll never inherit an account nobody wanted: if an engagement isn't a fuck yes inside these walls, we don't take it. Every tool we've built is yours on day one, along with the standing expectation that you'll break at least one of them by asking for something better.
08
The honest caveat
One option means the option is yours. No juniors means no one inherits the blame. Weeks mean the market grades the work while you still remember making it. Every constraint here was installed on purpose, and each one removes a place to hide. If a hedge is how you sleep, the three-option agencies are hiring too.
09 · No resume required
How to apply
No cover letter. No 90-page portfolio PDF. No resume upload, even. The application is three questions:
One piece of work you shipped and now hate, with the reason. Two hundred words max.
The best idea you ever killed, and why it deserved to die.
One thing in culture right now that makes you jealous.
Use AI to answer if you like; we do. We'll be able to tell whether you reviewed it.
Comeargue.
Yes, this job description was drafted with AI. A named human rewrote it, cut a third of it, and will defend every line on a call. That's the entire model, and it's hiring.
Frequently asked questions
Both, unapologetically. The role is real and open; the posting argues the model, because the model is the job. If the argument travels further than the vacancy, good. Taste travels.
No. Space is remote by design; the leadership is New York-based and the standard is location-independent.
No. The machines carry production volume: research synthesis, asset generation, builds, QA. Judgment, direction, and every recommendation stay with the human whose name is on the work. The full policy is published in Space's AI rules.
Because a fourth chair is sized to the person in it. You'll hear a real range in the first conversation, before you've invested anything beyond the three answers.
AI embedded in daily workflows: chaining models, building custom workflows, automating execution, and quality-checking every output before it ships. It is the minimum bar for joining Space; Level 5 (redesigning entire workstreams around AI) is expected within six months. The full ladder is published at sp-ce.co/notes/ai-fluency-ladder.
A named human reads all three answers. If the kill list is real, we call you.