Freelance Designer vacatures

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition.

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

Adyen is seeking an experienced, proactive, and collaborative Art Director/Senior Brand Designer with a specialized focus in Experiential Design. This role will be based in our Amsterdam office, working closely with cross-functional teams and reporting directly to our Global Design Team Lead.

Art Director - Internal Comms Branding

The Art Director role focuses on conceptualizing, designing, and executing visuals that not only align with Adyen’s brand guidelines, value proposition, and internal communications strategy but also elevate and enhance the overall internal brand experience. You’ll take complex ideas and product features and simplify them into beautiful, understandable visuals. You’ll respond to diverse briefs, translating project requirements into intuitive, impactful designs that achieve measurable outcomes.

The ideal candidate is experienced in responding to briefs, creating compelling designs across various objectives, and collaborating effectively with stakeholders. You are highly specialized in creating engaging touchpoints to activate an internal audience. Bonus if you have experience in other forms of design. This role requires strong project management skills and stakeholder management.

What you’ll do:

• [Creative Direction & Strategy] Act as the internal creative lead for large-scale campaigns (e.g., Investor Day, Connect), providing overall creative direction, conceptual routing, and visual identity stewardship to ensure all assets are cohesive and aligned with strategic goals.
• [Agency Management & QA] Take ownership of managing external agency and vendor relationships (e.g., Kinsmen, LiveLegends), including detailed briefing, creative steering, quality assurance (QA) on deliverables, and managing project timelines to ensure high design standards are met.
• [Presentation Design] Lead the end-to-end design and production of high-stakes presentations (e.g., 9 decks, 130+ slides), translating complex narratives and copy into compelling visual concepts, including data visualization, custom illustration, dynamic content, and motion design for slides.
• [Illustration] Develop brand-based illustrations from concept and sketches to finished product, especially icons and complex graphical elements required for presentation content and data-driven storytelling.
• [Print & Event Collaboration] Manage the creative collaboration with production houses (e.g., Brownys) to successfully deliver and finalize a high volume of print assets (e.g., banners, wayfinding, notebooks) by ensuring file preparation and design accuracy across physical media.
• [Experiential Design] Designing holistic, immersive experiences for an audience, often blending physical and digital touchpoints (like your event/streaming assets).
• [Internal Branding or Internal Brand Experience Design] ing brand strategy and design principles to a company's own employees to drive engagement, culture, and ambassadorship.
• [Engagement Design] A design approach focused purely on maximizing user (or audience) involvement and interaction with a piece of content, product, or campaign.
• Strategically elevate the internal brand’s visual identity across multiple platforms, ensuring a cohesive and impactful presence.
• Leverage extensive expertise in design principles and advanced techniques to deliver visually compelling, impactful design solutions that set a high standard for creative excellence and communication
• Act as a subject matter expert in internal communications design, providing insights, recommendations, and thought leadership to inform design strategy and decision-making processes.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate strategy, business objectives, cultural narratives, into creative solutions that consistently meet or exceed expectations.
• Manage multiple projects concurrently throughout all stages of the design process, from inception to final delivery.
• Take ownership and accountability for assigned projects, ensuring timelines, budgets, and quality standards are met.
• Proactively address any project-related challenges, proposing creative solutions and managing expectations as necessary.

Who you are:

• You have 8+ years of professional experience working as an Art Director or Brand Designer (in-house, freelance, or agency).
• You excel in the tools that make you an expert in art direction/brand design, with proficiency in Adobe CC, Keynote, Google slides, and Figma.
• Your portfolio showcases your expertise in art direction and brand engagement, with examples of strategic and creative solutions. Bonus if it includes a diverse range of work across different media types.
• You are a team player who understands the value of collaboration and an all-hands-on-deck approach in a fast-paced environment.
• You have the ability to self-start, stick to deadlines, and drive projects forward, while being open and comfortable with iteration and feedback.
• You have full professional proficiency (written and verbal) in English.
• Some domestic and international travel is required.

Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitments

Our unique approach is a product of our diverse perspectives. This diversity of backgrounds and cultures is essential in helping us maintain our momentum. Our business and technical challenges are unique, and we need as many different voices as possible to join us in solving them - voices like yours. No matter who you are or where you’re from, we welcome you to be your true self at Adyen.

Studies show that women and members of underrepresented communities for jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Does this sound like you? If so, Adyen encourages you to reconsider and . We look forward to your application!

What’s next?

Ensuring a smooth and enjoyable candidate experience is critical for us. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process tends to take about 4 weeks to complete, but may fluctuate depending on the role. Learn more about our hiring process here. Don’t be afraid to let us know if you need more flexibility.

This role is based out of our Amsterdam office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles.