Design Manager

CACTUS is a remote-first organization and we embrace an accelerate from anywhere culture. You may be required to travel to our Mumbai office based on business requirements or for company/team events.

Editage, DMS works with scientists, universities, organizations, societies, and publishers across more than 150 accounts from around the world. At Editage, DMS, we work with different stakeholders of the scientific landscape to visualize and disseminate their work. Through our content writing and design services, we convert complex scientific ideas into engaging content and visuals tailored to different audiences. Our marketing team creates tailored promotion and distribution strategies to help researchers and organizations create a media presence. Read more about Editage, DMS and past projects here. 

Our accounts are clustered around 3 key geographies: 

• Eastern markets: researchers, institutions, organizations, and journals from Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, etc.  

• Western markets: researchers, academic journals, publishers, and societies dotted across Europe and North America.  

• India market: researchers, government agencies, organization, think tanks, and institutions across India.  

Team structure:  

Under each key market, we have a multi-functional team comprising content creators, designers and animators, and marketing specialists: 

• Content vertical: Comprises writers & content reviewers that distill technical raw material such as manuscripts, interviews, etc. into different types of content- e.g. press releases, social media posts, lay summaries, video and infographic storyboards, etc. 

• Design vertical: Comprises designers and animators that create audio-visual products (infographics, illustrations, graphical abstracts, video summaries, etc.) based on the content writers’ storyboard and inputs. 

• Marketing vertical: Comprises news, digital, and social media marketing specialists that disseminate the content created on news platforms, to journalists, and on social media. 

As a Manager for Design for ROW Markets, Editage, DMS, you will be responsible for ensuring that our team of designers and animators produce high-quality content for clients from the Western region. Your role will primarily involve comprehensively understanding client briefs, converting those into a design vision in line with the client’s requirements, and ensuring proper execution. Additionally, you will be involved in solutioning and implementing plans to improve process efficiency, coordination with stakeholder teams, and output quality of the design team. 

Creating Design Strategy & Delivery: 

• Chalk out design requirements/vision based on client briefs, reference materials, etc. and communicate the brief with designers and animators in the team to ensure accurate execution. 

• Conceptualize design visions for identity building- e.g. create brand guidelines, mood boards, report templates, logos, websites etc. based on the client’s brief and the organization’s ethos. 

• Work with writers, editors, designers, animators, marketing executives, solutions executives, project managers, and operations executives to drive a project from client brief to delivery.   

• Reviewing design deliverables to deem them client-ready.  

• Ensuring quality and on-time delivery by the team. 

Resource management & engagement:  

• Helping train and onboard new resources- scientific communicators, writers, and reviewers. 

• Optimizing training modules to reflect changes in services and increasing training impact. 

• Query resolution for designers, animators, freelancers, contractors, etc. 

• Organizing upskilling and learning sessions for the design team on a need-basis. 

Quality management:  

• Assessing client complaints to identify root causes and next steps. 

• Share feedback with relevant stakeholders in light of complaints or errors in deliverables. 

• Oversee regular feedback to designers and animators on jobs. 

• Solutioning for recurring quality trends and implementing next steps. 

• Seeking design-related feedback from other teams such as content and marketing to improve design-related processes and drive quality. 

Internal process management:  

• Ensuring smooth and efficient collaboration between the design team and internal stakeholders such as content and marketing teams. 

• Evaluating current processes and driving efficiency through streamlining or updating processes, capacity utilization, etc. 

Primary PoC for design-related queries: 

• Acting as a PoC for design-related queries from clients, client managers, project managers, account managers, etc. 

• Helping scope projects, processes, timelines, etc.

• Design skills: Ability to research, understand, and interact with content across various design formats.  

• Great attention to detail and basic designing skills. Excellent understanding of design approaches across social and digital media. Good attention to detail and English language skills. 

• Organizational skills: Ability to work with autonomy, manage time, prioritize tasks, and coordinate. 

• Communication skills: Ability to convert complex technical/scientific material into consumable & effective formats, to share effective written and verbal feedback with designers and animators, and to communicate effectively with internal and external stakeholders and clients.  

• Problem solving skills: Ability to identify gaps in processes and systems and provide short and long-term solutions to influence the growth of the team. Ability to plan and execute semi-independently. 

• Customer focus: Strong customer focus and ability to think from a customer’s perspective when working on deliverables, identifying solutions, or implementing quality measures. 

• Openness to learning and can-do outlook: An open mind to exploring change, being agile, and challenging the status quo. The ability and initiative to constantly keep up with changing digital landscapes. 

Eligibility Criteria

• Graduate degree in any field (scientific background is an added advantage). 

• 3+ years of experience in medical illustrations, scientific infographics and graphical abstracts, scientific animation, website design, brand design, scientific visualization, etc.  

• Advanced skills in Adobe Design Suite (Illustrator and Photoshop) and PowerPoint.  

• Experience in project and/or stakeholder management. 

• The applicant should have spent at least 1 year in their current role.  

• You will be given an in-depth orientation and training before assuming the position.  

Before applying, please ensure you meet the role requirements listed above and have legal authorization to work in the country where this role is advertised. Our selection process typically involves an initial screening by a recruiter, a technical assessment, and two to three interview rounds. For this role, we will have three rounds. One assessment round, followed by two interview rounds. 

Equal Opportunity

Our hiring practices reflect our commitment to providing equal opportunities and creating an environment where everyone can thrive, develop, and succeed. We celebrate the uniqueness of our team members and prohibit discrimination of any kind, based on race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, or any other protected characteristic.

Accelerating from Anywhere

As a remote-first organization, these are essential attributes we look for in all our candidates.

• Taking ownership of your work with minimal supervision, showing strong ability to organize, prioritize and deliver results independently.
• Documenting work that brings everyone on the same page.
• Maturity to choose between synchronous and asynchronous collaboration.
• Effectively collaborating with colleagues across different time zones by setting dedicated hours for collaboration and keeping team members updated through your MS Teams status.

Established in 2002, Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a leading technology company that specializes in expert services and AI-driven products which improve how research gets funded, published, communicated, and discovered. Its flagship brand Editage offers a comprehensive suite of researcher solutions, including expert services and cutting-edge AI products like Mind the Graph, Paperpal, and R Discovery. With offices in Princeton, London, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai and a global workforce of over 3,000 experts, CACTUS is a pioneer in workplace best practices and has been consistently recognized as a great place to work.