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Lead Graphic Designer
Durham, NC
Communications

CPA.com, a leader in accounting and finance digital innovation and transformation, is seeking a Lead Graphic Designer to join our Marketing and Communications team. This is a key role responsible for evolving and maintaining the CPA.com visual brand, providing creative direction across projects, and ensuring high-quality digital and print design execution, including executive presentations, event branding, thought leadership content, marketing campaign assets and more. The ideal candidate is both a hands-on designer and a design leader, capable of managing freelance contributors, refining brand identity, and influencing strategic creative initiatives through close collaboration with business partners and executive leadership. This is a hybrid role, requiring three days in-office per week.

 

Key Responsibilities

 

Brand Leadership & Strategy

  • Contribute to the CPA.com brand refresh initiative, helping to refine visual identity, guidelines, and design systems.
  • Maintain and evolve design standards across all channels (digital, print, events, video, and presentations).
  • Act as a brand steward, ensuring consistency, quality and creativity in all deliverables.

Creative Direction & Project Execution

  • Lead the design and production of digital assets for the bi-weekly AICPA Town Hall broadcast series, including PowerPoint presentations, infographics, and promotional materials. You’ll work with a broad array of stakeholders, including executive team members and subject matter experts to design and manage content reviews, often producing new versions in a quick turnaround time.
  • Provide creative direction, design reviews, and quality assurance for freelance designers; establish and execute processes to ensure all work aligns with brand standards and meets project deadlines.
  • Design and manage customizable brand templates for core design assets, such as digital and print advertisements, whitepapers, newsletters, toolkits and graphics (web, social media, event and static data/infographics).
  • Develop executive presentations, templates and visual frameworks that enable leadership to clearly communicate corporate initiatives.
  • Design marketing collateral to support campaigns, thought leadership reports, sponsorships, and events.
  • Maintain and manage asset guidelines and libraries.
  • Keep up-to-date on the latest design-related trends, best practices and emerging tools and capabilities (including AI), helping us continue to innovate and drive content creation and workflow efficiencies. 
     

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

  • Partner with internal teams (executive leadership, marketing, R&I, HR, and sales) to translate business goals into compelling visual stories.
  • Manage workflows and prioritize requests to balance quick-turnaround needs with longer-term strategic projects.
  • Serve as a trusted advisor on design best practices, offering proactive guidance to stakeholders.

Qualifications

  • Experience: 7-10 years of professional design experience, with at least 2 years in a senior or lead design role. Experience in financial services, technology, or professional services industries preferred.
  • Leadership: Demonstrated ability to mentor and guide freelance or junior designers, with strong project management and quality control skills.
  • Technical Skills: Advanced expertise in Microsoft Suite (especially PowerPoint) and Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop). Experience with motion graphics, video editing, or interactive design tools a plus. Knowledge of emerging AI-enabled tools or capabilities
  • Creative Strengths: Strong foundation in typography, layout, color theory, and visual storytelling. Ability to balance creative vision with practical execution.
  • Soft Skills: Collaborative, detail-oriented, adaptable, and capable of managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment. Excellent verbal, written, and visual communication skills.
  • Education: Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, or related field. Equivalent experience considered.
  • Portfolio: A robust portfolio showcasing brand design, multi-channel campaigns, and presentation work.
  • Ability to travel, as needed (up to 10%)

 

About CPA.com

CPA.com brings innovative solutions to the accounting profession, either in partnership with leading providers or directly through its own development. The company has established itself as a thought leader on emerging technologies and as the trusted business advisor to practitioners in the United States, with a growing global focus. Our company’s core mission is to drive the transformation of practice areas, advance the technology ecosystem for the profession, and lead technology research and innovation efforts for practitioners. CPA.com is a subsidiary of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA).

 

What’s life like at CPA.com? Our team members would describe it as innovative, fast-paced, and flexible. We’re engaged—we get involved. We’re accountable—we stand behind our work. We’re collaborative—we thrive on teamwork. We’re authentic—we’re true to who we are. And we’re innovative-we look to what’s next.