Senior Performance Creative Strategist

The opportunity Paid media creative has changed more in the last three years than in the previous twenty. The gap between brands that get this and brands that do not is now visible in their results. The people driving that gap are not traditional creatives and they are not media buyers. They are a new kind of operator: someone who understands culture well enough to know what will stop a scroll, thinks with the discipline of a strategist, and is hands-on enough to produce and iterate at pace using the latest AI-powered tools. Not brief and review. Make, test, learn, repeat. Velstar is a full-service ecommerce agency with offices in Liverpool, Leeds, and Edinburgh. We work with fast-growth DTC brands, high street retailers, and complex B2B businesses across paid and owned channels. As Senior Creative Strategist, you will work within our Performance Creative team alongside the Lead Creative Strategist. You will be embedded in a cross-functional client squad and own the creative strategy for a defined portfolio of clients, producing and iterating paid media creative with full accountability for your accounts from brief to live ad. This is a hands-on role with real autonomy. You will not be waiting for direction on every decision. You are expected to think strategically, produce quickly, analyse what is working, and iterate without being prompted. This is a genuine opportunity to do meaningful work on significant client accounts, with a clear path forward for someone who wants to grow into a lead position. If you have proved what you can do at senior level and want the space to build on it, this is the right role at the right time. How you will work Velstar operates through cross-functional squads. Each squad is coordinated by a Success Manager who manages client relationships and day-to-day client communication. You sit inside one squad alongside channel specialists, contributing the creative strategy across its client portfolio. Client queries stay within the squad. You work directly with the Success Manager and channel specialists to resolve creative challenges, and escalate to the Lead Creative Strategist when you need strategic input or a second opinion. The Lead is there to support you, not to manage your every move. Some clients are further along this journey than others. You will need to be equally comfortable managing paid social campaigns in a more traditional sense while helping those clients evolve toward a performance creative model. What you will do Own the creative strategy for a defined portfolio of paid media clients, with Meta and TikTok as the primary channels. Develop compelling ad concepts informed by brand guidelines, client tone of voice, buyer personas, and AI avatar direction. Write detailed creative briefs that creators can act on without ambiguity. Launch, manage, and optimise paid media campaigns at pace, using performance data to drive creative decisions. Build and run testing frameworks: hypothesis, execution, analysis, rapid iteration. Analyse on and off-platform performance data to identify what is working, what is not, and what to do next. Brief and direct AI-powered and human creators clearly and at volume. Participate in workshops and structured sessions with client stakeholders to align on creative direction. Report on creative performance in plain language with clear recommendations. Work closely with the Lead Creative Strategist to develop and improve the team's creative process. What we are looking for Essential Demonstrable experience in performance creative or paid social creative strategy, with examples of work and results to back it up. Proven track record producing paid media creative at volume, particularly across Meta and TikTok. Solid understanding of paid social performance and the relationship between creative decisions and commercial outcomes. Proven hands-on experience with AI-assisted production tools such as Creatify, Arcads, ElevenLabs, CapCut Pro, or equivalents. Confident working knowledge of Meta Ads Manager and TikTok Ads Manager, including campaign setup, optimisation, and analysis. Experience working with DTC ecommerce brands. Ability to manage multiple accounts simultaneously and prioritise effectively. Strong written communication. Your briefs are clear, structured, and actionable. Desirable Experience with Motion, Foreplay, or similar creative analytics platforms. Agency background with exposure to multiple brand categories. Awareness of how creative strategy connects to media buying, offer development, and wider growth objectives. Experience briefing UGC creators or working with influencer-generated content. Experience running or contributing to client workshops or creative sessions. The right person for this role is comfortable at pace, thrives in an iterative environment, and brings genuine hands-on experience with performance metrics and AI tooling. If that describes how you already work, we would like to hear from you.