Senior Designer

Senior Designer

Acta · Ogden, UT (On-Site)

About the Role

You are a senior women's designer ready for more room than you have now.

You can still do the work yourself — carry categories from concept through production-ready at a high bar, and you know fit and fabric as a practitioner: blocks, grade rules, fabrication, construction. You are fast in the tools the job actually runs on.

And you can build. The architecture of the line — what the collection is, how it ladders, what makes the cut. The fit and sizing standard every garment gets held to. The seasonal calendar and the process the team runs on. The team itself.

Most designers do one of those halves well. This seat needs both.

Responsibilities

• Design the line. Carry your own categories from concept through sketch, spec and sample review to production-ready.
• Own line architecture. Define what the collection is: category mix, how styles ladder against one another, what earns a place in a seasonal drop and what gets cut. Bring a merchandising point of view to design decisions rather than receiving an assortment and executing it.
• Own the fit, sizing and grading standard. Establish Acta's block, size range and grade rules, and hold every style to them. It is the reason repeat customers either trust the size chart or stop buying.
• Build the design process. Stand up the seasonal calendar, the design-to-sample workflow, review gates and handoff standards so collections ship on cadence predictably instead of heroically.
• Build and manage the team. Define the seats, help hire them, and manage the designers who come in under you as the work grows.
• Raise the fit and fabric bar. Bring construction, fabrication and finishing technique from brands where those things are done at an elite level, and teach it into the team.
• Partner across the product lane. Work with the Senior Product Designer on craft and with the Senior Tech Pack Designer on how a design becomes a manufacturable garment, so that what you architect is what actually ships.
• Develop the junior bench. Give the junior designers real work, real feedback and a path — the team's long-term capacity depends on them getting better, not just busier.

Success Criteria

30 Days

• Oriented on the line and the catalog.
• Has audited the current fit and sizing practice across the live assortment and can say plainly where it is inconsistent.
• Has a point of view on the line architecture — what the collection is missing and what it is carrying that it should not be.

90 Days

• Owns categories outright and has product moving through to production-ready.
• The fit, sizing and grading standard is drafted, agreed with the product team, and being applied to new styles.
• A seasonal design calendar exists and the team is working to it.

180 Days

• A seasonal collection has been architected and delivered under the new process, on the calendar it committed to.
• Design throughput measurably higher than at hire, with the junior bench carrying more of it.
• Team plan defined and the first hire under this seat either made or in process.

Qualifications

Required

• Seven or more years designing women's apparel, with at least three of those owning categories end to end at a brand known for its product.
• Demonstrated command of fit and fabric — you can talk about blocks, grade rules, fabrication and construction as a practitioner, not a coordinator, and you have been the person who set the standard rather than followed one.
• Experience taking a line from concept through production-ready with factories, including the technical detail that decides whether a sample comes back right.
• Evidence you have built something that was not there before — a process, a standard, a calendar, a team. Improving inside a system someone else built is not the same thing.
• Fluent in the tools the work runs on — Illustrator for design and flats, and comfort with 3D sampling (CLO, Browzwear or similar) or a clear willingness to learn it. Tech packs and product data run on an in-house system you will be trained on, so experience with a specific PLM platform is not required.
• A portfolio that shows a point of view on product, not only execution of someone else's.

Preferred

• Experience at an elevated women's brand running a fast, continuous release cadence.
• Line architecture or merchandising exposure — you have had a say in what the assortment is, not only how it looks.
• Has hired, managed or mentored designers and can describe what they do differently as a manager than as an IC.
• Comfortable in a company where the process is still being written and the answer is often yours to supply.

Reporting & Organization

• Reports to: VP of Product
• Team: Acta — Apparel Design
• Peer: Senior Product Designer, who leads the existing design pod and retains apparel quality engineering and factory and vendor development
• Direct reports: None at hire. You draw on the junior designers for execution support and build a dedicated bench as the work grows
• Level: Senior individual contributor with a team-building mandate
• Location: On-site, Ogden, Utah. Relocation support is available.

Compensation

We base salary on your experience, not a posted range. Feel free to raise it on your first call with our recruiter — we'd rather talk about it early than leave you guessing.

About Acta

Acta is a women's apparel brand based in Ogden, Utah, designing and selling its collections direct-to-consumer and through retail partners.