Design Director

Who We Are:On Location is a global leader in premium experiential hospitality, offering ticketing, curated guest experiences, live event production and travel management across sports, entertainment, fashion and culture. On Location provides unrivaled access for corporate clients and fans looking for official, immersive experiences at marquee events, including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, FIFA World Cup 2026, Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, and more. An official partner and/or service provider to over 150 iconic rights holders, such as the IOC (the Milano Cortina 2026 and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games), FIFA, NFL, NCAA, UFC, WWE, and PGA of America, the company also owns and operates a number of its own unique experiences. On Location is a subsidiary of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO), a premium sports and entertainment company.

The Role and What You’ll Do:

We are looking for a Design Director responsible for concepting and producing creative ideas on a large-scale event with multiple venues, dates, and shareholders involved.  Working alongside project managers, production partners, and the leadership team, the Design Director will be skilled in visualizing the team’s business objectives and communicating those goals through strategically executed creative ideas.  Strong Sketchup, Adobe Creative Suite, and AutoCAD (VWX) skills are a must.  High level of creativity and outside the figurative box thinking highly encouraged, with a foundation in sound event production principles.  They should be flexible, hardworking and have extreme attention to detail even when working on tight deadlines. 

• Leadership of design for a full partner portfolio, managing other art directors, graphic designers and managers within the design team to bring the whole project together

• Ability to manage timelines from start to finish for project for concepting, approvals, and implementation

• Work with Event Production and Product Development teams to concept, communicate and develop environments that capture the design intent for activations

• Master of designing and developing environments with accompanying 2/3D assets

• Mastery of design and render using SketchUp, Vectorworks, 3D rendering software, Photoshop/Illustrator, PowerPoint/Keynote

• Mastery of creating floorplans, technical drawings, and internal/external presentations

• Ability to adapt designs within physical and budgetary constraints 

• Mastery of working with and adhering to brand guidelines

• Proven experience designing for events, experiential design, trade show design, hospitality, product activations, or similar areas

• Proficiency with on-site art direction and overall project design execution especially in relation to coordinating with vendors, installers, and fabricators throughout the design and production timelines

• Pushes innovation, positive work ethic, approachable, collaborative, good under pressure, results-oriented, a problem-solver who can both provide and take direction

• Time-management skills, meets project deliverables and timelines

• Team Leader as team members will be added under this position as it’s built out

 Other Duties & Responsibilities

• Follow administrative procedures for timesheets, time off requests, and other HR needs

• Keep up to date with any deliverables the Project Management team needs for billing purposes

You Have These:

• Bachelor's Degree in Design or a related field, or equivalent experience required

• 9+ Years Experience in fields such as Architectural Design / Event Design / Experiential Marketing / Event Production

• Mastery of SketchUp, Adobe Design Suite, AutoCAD (Ideally VWX), Keyshot (or similar) and MS Office Suite

• Artistic, sketching or additional 3D, rendering or Adobe Suite skills

• Has led a team of creatives on multiple fronts with multiple projects simultaneously

• Great visual eye for style and branding control

• Excellent proactive communication skills

• Must be able to work autonomously – taking ownership of your workload and able to juggle several projects at one time

• Approachable, collaborative, results-oriented, problem-solver who can both provide and take direction well

• Attention to detail, carefully following instructions, and checking work for accuracy

• Good timekeeping and work ethic that is characterized by commitment, motivation, and energy 

We’d Love If You Also Have These: 

• Experience working on large scale events a plus

• Working knowledge of Excel and other Microsoft Office programs 

Travel: Must be adaptable with work and travel schedule and be available to travel for work which may include extended work hours during nights, weekends, and holidays.  This position may require up to  20% travel. 

How we work: 

TKO is at the center of sports, media, entertainment, and fashion and is a largely relationship-based business. To foster an environment of collaboration, develop our future talent, and build on relationships across leadership, peers, and teams, we work from the office 4 days per week/in a remote capacity. We see immeasurable value internally and throughout the core of the businesses we support.

Don’t meet every single requirement? We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Per local requirements and in the interest of transparency, the range shown below reflects the prevalent current hiring range for this position. Hiring pay rates are based on a number of factors, including location and may vary depending on job-related qualifications, knowledge, skills and experience. The company strives to provide locally competitive rewards packages, which include base rate along with, as applicable, short- and long-term incentives, growth and developmental opportunities, and robust benefits, such as health care, retirement, vacation and other paid time off, and additional offerings.

Hiring Range Minimum:

$101,250 annually

Hiring Range Maximum:

$135,000 annually