Visual Designer

Overview At Microsoft, we’re building a modern, AI-forward marketing organization that learns faster, activates smarter, and drives measurable impact. Our approach blends human creativity with AI-powered insights to fuel bold, culturally inspired creative strategies at scale.

We prioritize outcomes over outputs, embrace rapid learning loops, and operate in agile flight formations that unite disciplines across Commercial Brand, Creative, and Customer Marketing.

As a Visual Designer in the Engines & Experiences Design Studio, you are the generalist maker behind how Microsoft’s commercial brand shows up in culture. You design, illustrate, and animate work that lives across social platforms, campaign moments, product launches, and events — moving between building a campaign design system one week and illustrating a concept with no existing reference the next.

We’re looking for an AI-native designer: someone who treats generative tools as part of their craft rather than a shortcut around it, using them to explore more directions, produce more variations, and reach a higher-quality answer faster — while holding the taste and judgment that decide which answer is right.

You’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with creative leads, writers, producers, and product marketers, and be trusted to take work from brief to ship.

At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth ‑ mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress, people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what’s next for everyone.

Responsibilities

• Own social and campaign visual design end to end — concept through final delivery — producing static, illustrated, and motion assets for multiple product launches and always-on campaigns each quarter.
• Create original illustration and build graphic systems (type, color, layout, iconography) that give campaigns a distinct point of view and hold up from a 1080x1350 social frame to an event-scale backdrop.
• Use generative AI across the workflow — ideation, image and video generation, variation, retouching, and production — and bring repeatable prompts, styles, and pipelines back to the studio so the whole team compounds on what you learn.
• Translate brand and campaign strategy into work that reads clearly to global audiences, partnering with creative leads, writers, and producers from brief through review to launch.
• Adapt master creative into platform-native cuts and localized variants across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube, holding craft and brand consistency across dozens of deliverables per campaign.
• Raise the craft bar across the studio — give and receive feedback in reviews, provide art direction to internal partners and external agencies, and bring new formats, tools, and trends to the team.
• Manage assets responsibly: tag visual assets with sensitivity labels, store them in access-controlled repositories, and keep source files organized and handoff-ready.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or Certificate in Design, Fine Arts, Visual Communications, Human Computer Interaction, or a related art field AND 2+ years of experience in art design or a related art field, OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in visual/graphic design, preferably in brand, marketing, or social content.
• A portfolio showing range across social, campaign, and digital formats — including both graphic design and original illustration.
• Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects) and Figma.
• Demonstrated use of generative AI tools in shipped design work, or clear evidence of actively building that fluency.
• Ability to take a brief to finished, on-brand deliverables independently, and to give and receive direct creative feedback.
• Illustration as a core strength — a distinct hand that can flex across styles and hold a campaign together.
• Generalist range: motion design and short-form video editing (After Effects, Premiere) alongside static graphic design.
• Deep fluency with generative image, video, and layout tools (e.g., Firefly, Midjourney, Sora, Runway, Nano Banana), including building style libraries and model-assisted production pipelines others can reuse.
• Experience designing platform-native content for Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube.
• Experience shipping 2+ campaigns or products end to end.
• Experience working in a fast-paced, matrixed organization and directing external agencies or production partners.
• Communication skills, openness to feedback, and a passion for craft, precision, and storytelling through design.

Art IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $133,800 - $219,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.

If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.