Chelsea Football Club
Commercial Design Lead
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Commercial Design Lead
DEPARTMENT: Commercial Planning
LOCATION: London
CONTRACT: Permanent, 35 hours
JOB FUNCTION
This is a senior creative leadership role responsible for elevating and delivering Chelsea FC’s commercial design standards to world-class quality. The role leads a team of approx. four (4) designers, setting the creative vision and ensuring flawless execution of sales presentations, partnership materials, along with additional design needs across the CFC commercial operations. Success means delivering work of the highest standard under pressure and enhancing the quality and output of the across the commercial function
Closing date: 25th September
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. In the event that we receive a large number of applications, the position may be filled before the listed closing date. To avoid missing out, please submit your application at your earliest convenience.
MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead, manage, inspire and mentor a team of approx. four (4) designers, fostering a culture of excellence, accountability and continuous improvement
- Set and uphold creative direction for all commercial sales materials, particularly for principal partnership assets (e.g. Shirt, Sleeve, Training Kit), ensuring outputs meet elite industry and brand standards
- Drive consistency, quality and innovation across all presentations and partnership collateral, raising standards to rival the best agencies
- Translate briefs into compelling visual storytelling, combining design craft with strong narrative structure in collaboration with Commercial Strategy and Sales teams.
- Elevate data visualisation: transform complex commercial data into clear, impactful graphics and layouts for senior stakeholders
- Build and maintain creative and asset template timeline ensuring proper in-market execution and
- Build credibility with the President, Commercial, Sales and Commercial Planning leadership by consistently delivering polished, intuitive design solutions without requiring multiple iterations
- Ensure an efficient creative process: proactive capacity planning, clear project prioritisation, and maintaining an up-to-date asset / image library
- Introduce and integrate motion, animation, and new creative design techniques where appropriate to enhance impact
- Partner closely with the Marketing Creative studio to apply and evolve Chelsea FC brand guidelines, ensuring commercial outputs align with the wider Club identity
- Oversee delivery of all design outputs linked to sponsorship activation (e.g. interview backdrops, stadium branding, LED signage), ensuring precision in scaling, quality and execution
- Ensure the team maintain an up-to-date image catalogue that supports build of presentations
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MEASURES OF PERFORMANCE
- Creative Excellence: Deliver presentations and design outputs of agency-level quality that consistently impress senior executives and external stakeholders
- Consistency: Ensure all collateral is on-brand, visually compelling, and meets the highest standards without repeated iteration
- Leadership impact: Maintain a motivated, high-performing design team that produces work efficiently under pressure and grows in capability under your mentorship
- Credibility: Maintain Commercial Design as a trusted function within the Club, recognised by key stakeholders as best-in-class
- Innovation: Introduce creative techniques (motion, animation, new visual approaches) that elevate storytelling and differentiate Chelsea FC from competitors
- Operational discipline: Balance speed with quality, ensuring the design function meets demanding deadlines while maintaining meticulous attention to detail.
- Ensure that all sponsorship collateral/online messages are consistent with brand and corporate standards, speaks the Chelsea FC ‘language’ and upholds brand values.
- Consistently meet deadlines and ability to flag capacity planning issues.
- Develop internal relationships and be a dependable point of contact for delivering solutions.
- Ability to balance quality of work against production and volume deadlines.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Experience
- Significant experience in agency or in-house design teams, with a proven track record of leading creative output at pace and scale Proven agency or in-house experience
- Demonstrable experience managing and developing a team of designers, raising quality standards and mentoring talent.
- Advanced PowerPoint design skills, with proven ability to deliver elite-level presentations as a primary design platform.
- Advanced Adobe Creative Suite expertise (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) with ability to set and enforce best practice.
- Experience implementing design processes and systems that drive speed, consistency and quality.
Skills and Behaviours
- Desire to be a hands-on, collaborative, proactive, creative lead continuing to strive for excellence and meet the deadlines/demands of the role
- Creative leader with a strong design eye and uncompromising attention to detail.
- Able to raise standards under pressure while managing multiple high-stakes projects simultaneously.
- Highly organised, proactive, and accountable — a natural problem-solver who thrives in a fast-paced, elite environment.
- Strong communication and relationship skills, able to build credibility with senior executives and across teams.
- Resilient and driven, motivated by delivering work of world-class standard.
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Our Expectations
- To embody the club’s BLUE behaviours (Brave, Lead, Unity, Edge) in the approach to work and interaction with others
- To adhere to the club’s policies and procedures, including Health & Safety, Financial Authorisation, Confidentiality and GDPR.
- To act as an ambassador for diversity, equality, and inclusion, and demonstrate a positive commitment by treating others fairly in line with our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Policy and reporting any acts of discrimination through appropriate channels
- To create a safe environment and act to protect all young people and vulnerable adults that are either in your care or attending club premises, and report any concerns to the Safeguarding Lead
- To report any misconduct or suspected misconduct to the HR Department.
Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
At Chelsea we recognise that the diversity of our people is one of our greatest strengths and we are taking positive action to ensure our existing colleagues and job applicants can fully be themselves and bring their own unique experiences and perspectives to Chelsea FC. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.
If you need reasonable adjustments made to the recruitment process, please reach out to your recruiter, who will be able to advise and support you.
Chelsea FC is fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all children, young people and adults at risk (vulnerable groups). We therefore require all successful applicants to complete a DBS Check prior to starting employment. Depending on the role, successful applicants may also be required to undergo other child protection screening where appropriate.
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