Head of Performance Creative

At Haus of Chain, we approach recruitment differently. Built inside a full-service digital agency, we place exceptional marketing talent based on proven execution and real commercial impact, not just what appears on a CV.

We’re proud to be partnering with Defiant Digital – Sydney’s leading performance creative agency, driving serious growth for 300+ DTC brands, including DoorDash, Swyftx, Love To Dream and Geedup.

At Defiant, creative isn’t a support function. It’s the growth lever. And they need the best person in the space to run it. Enter the Head of Performance Creative. 

This isn’t a creative director with a big title and a mood board. This is the person who runs the most important function at one of Australia’s sharpest performance creative agencies. 

You’ll lead creative strategy across a portfolio of ambitious, high-spend DTC brands. You’ll set the direction, hold the standards and own the results. 

You’ll manage a team of creative strategists, a UGC producer and a design lead, supporting them by building the frameworks and systems that make great creative repeatable and scalable, not one-off. You’ll run weekly training sessions that keep the team sharp on what’s actually working in the market right now.

You’ll live in ad account data. You’ll know what’s fatiguing before the client does and brief accordingly. You present creative strategy with confidence and build trust and rapport with clients quicker than a camera clicks. You’ll take a long-term view on managing the creator program, casting and briefing with relationships at the forefront. 

You’ll have access to a 458sqm creative warehouse in Sydney – full production studio, green screen, podcast-style sets, the works. You’ll work closely with the producer to plan studio shoots and pull the right people together. You’re the brain behind everything, ensuring that studio days are results-oriented and deliver the stack of assets in their various forms. You’ll need to be on-site to make it happen. 

You’ll also own Defiant’s Meta post-Andromeda creative diversity strategy. Entity ID, creative similarity, incremental reach, this isn’t a talking point here. It’s the job.

You watch ads in your spare time and immediately know why they work.

You’ve got 5+ years in DTC performance creative strategy, across paid social with real scale. Not adjacent to it. You have case studies you can actually walk through. A real conversation about what you did, why you did it and what happened – not just a pretty PDF.

You’ve built and developed creative teams, not just produced good work. You’re native on TikTok, deep in the DTC ecosystem. You can open an Ads Manager account cold and know exactly what the creative is telling you – you’ve got strong opinions about what makes an ad perform, backed up with data.

You’ve built an AI research stack you actually use across audience research, hook development, scripting and competitive analysis and you write copy that sounds like a real customer said it. 

You’re based in Sydney or genuinely ready to relocate, the studio is one of your biggest levers and this role doesn’t work without it.

Bonus if you bring: media buying experience on Meta or TikTok, high-production creative alongside UGC, or hands-on experience with whitelisting and partnership ads.

Life at Defiant 

Defiant doesn’t believe companies have a culture; they are one. This is a team of A-players on a mission and they back it up. Flat management structure, real autonomy, no corporate red tape. When things need to change, they change.

What comes with the role: Top of industry salary, flexibility, annual learning budget, clear progression map from day one, and regular team events – and let’s not forget that 458 sqm Sydney production studio that will become your creative weapon