Senior Design Manager
White Desert Antarctica pioneers luxury polar travel, delivering unparalleled expeditions to the pristine Antarctic interior. Operating private flights from Cape Town, we offer access to one of the most remote regions on Earth through our exclusive camps.
Our experiences combine extraordinary adventure with world-class hospitality, each journey carefully crafted to be seamless, highly personalised, and transformative for a global clientele of discerning explorers.
Role Summary:
We are looking for a talented, detail-obsessed Design Manager to own all design execution across both brands. This is a rare in-house role at the intersection of luxury adventure travel, destination storytelling, and commercial design — and a genuine opportunity to shape how some of the world's most distinctive brands look and feel across every touchpoint.
You will work directly with our commercial, marketing, and guest experience teams, and serve as the day-to-day client-side lead with our external brand agency. You will be the person who holds the standard, briefs, directs, and executes, ensuring every asset reflects the quality our guests expect.
To apply for the role, please send your CV to careers@white-desert.com with the position in the subject line.
Key Responsibilities:
Guest Experience & Materials
Design and production of all physical and experiential materials guests encounter - welcome kits, itinerary documents, signage, environmental graphics, and printed collateral.
Sales & Marketing Collateral
Brochures, proposals, presentations, and seasonal lookbooks that communicate the White Desert and Dr Jones experience at the highest standard.
Digital & Performance Marketing
Static and motion assets for digital advertising, email campaigns, and social content. You understand how design functions within paid and organic digital channels and can produce assets that perform as well as they look.
Web & E-Commerce
Landing page design and production for campaign pages, booking flows, and the online retail experience, in close collaboration with developers where required.
Retail & Boutique Merchandising
Packaging, swing tags, signage, and in-store design for the White Desert retail boutique — translating brand language into physical product and retail environment.
Brand Guardianship Day-to-day stewardship of our brand book and CI guidelines, working with our external agency to evolve and maintain the framework. You set the standard internally and hold every team and every asset to it.
Ideal Profile:
—6–9 years of design experience, with a portfolio that demonstrates genuine range across print, digital, identity, and environmental or spatial work
—Experience at a luxury, hospitality, travel, or lifestyle brand, either in-house or agency-side with comparable clients
—Proven ability to manage external agency relationships as the client-side lead, holding briefs, challenging work, and maintaining brand standards without a creative director above you day-to-day
—Mastery of the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop) and proficiency in Figma
—A strong command of premium print production — paper stocks, finishes, print specifications, and supplier management
—Comfort designing for digital performance contexts: ad formats, email, web, and e-commerce
—Highly organised, with the ability to manage multiple briefs across teams simultaneously and deliver without hand-holding
—Based in, or willing to relocate to, Cape Town
Adventageous:
—Motion design capability (After Effects or equivalent)
—Basic web production skills (HTML/CSS, Webflow, or similar)
—Retail or packaging design experience
—An understanding of, or genuine curiosity about, the ultra-luxury and expedition travel space
What We Offer:
—A genuinely unique brand and product to work with
—A small, high-calibre team with real creative ambition and a flat structure
—Ownership of the design function from day one
—Competitive salary commensurate with experience
—The possibility of visiting Antarctica. Yes, really.
