Global Brand & Design Lead (Contract)

Job Description

New Energy Nexus (NEX) is an international NGO that supports climate solutions and builds a more equitable clean energy economy. Our laser focus is on clean energy entrepreneurs: providing them with funds, accelerators, and networks to thrive. They are our main audience and our agent of change.

We started in California in 2004 and now operate across China, India, Southeast Asia, East and West Africa, and Australia. We have leveraged US$5.4 billion in investment and supported more than 11,000 entrepreneurs.

About the Role & Opportunity

We're bringing on a senior designer and brand strategist for six months to lift the craft of everything NEX puts in front of the world. You'll work on two fronts: sharpening our brand system and how it's applied across 14 countries, and designing the content and materials our team needs - landing pages, reports, decks, and campaign assets. You'll be comfortable switching often and quickly between strategic and creative roles, to ad hoc and hands-on content design.

You'll partner closely with our Marketing Manager, who runs our ecosystem of websites and needs a design counterpart for UX and page design, as well as our Content & Engagement Lead, who manages our channels. This is a hands-on role for someone who thinks strategically about brands and still loves to make things.

There is potential scope for this role to be permanent pending funding.

Working at New Energy Nexus

You will join a small but mighty global communications team inside a forward-thinking international NGO. We support comms leads in each of the 14 countries we operate in, manage all global channels, and steward the NEX brand and editorial process. Your manager will respect your work-life balance and fully support you in bringing your whole self to work.

This role is offered as an initial 6 month contract, with the potential to become a permanent position subject to organizational needs and future funding. We are primarily seeking a full-time team member, although part-time arrangements may be considered for an exceptional candidate.

This role is fully remote. You'll need a reliable internet connection and flexibility to collaborate with colleagues across multiple time zones. Applicants must have the legal right to work in the country where they are based, as New Energy Nexus is unable to provide visa sponsorship or relocation assistance.

A Typical Day

You start with a UX review of a program landing page alongside the Marketing Manager, sketching a cleaner user journey in Figma. Mid-morning, you design social templates for a campaign, working closely with a chapter comms lead, then check how the brand is showing up on a chapter website, while flagging and implementing fixes. In the afternoon, you lay out a donor-facing slide deck and build a reusable template. You end the day in a call with colleagues from around the world to give your advice on the visual branding of a new flagship event showcasing clean energy startups, scouting gaps you can support on.

Core Responsibilities

Brand

• Audit and sharpen the NEX brand system: guidelines, templates, brand kits across Canva and Drive, and how the brand shows up across global and chapter channels
• Advise the CCO on brand strategy and visual identity decisions
• Support chapter teams to apply the brand well

Website UX and Design

• Partner with the Marketing Manager on UX for our global and chapter websites: user journeys, landing pages, and page layouts
• Build/design pages using an existing page builder/block editor in Wordpress using Figma (or similar) to design.
• Improve conversion on key pages: program applications, event registrations, and contact points

Campaign Design and Creative Systems

• Art-direct the creative for flagship campaigns, working closely with the Content Lead and Marketing Manager, and local chapters, from concept to rollout
• Build scalable design systems the global team runs on - campaign toolkits, templates, and asset libraries
• Be a facilitator and mentor to chapter comms leads: coach them on brand and design craft, and guide their work, or roll up your sleeves and implement, depending on what each country chapter needs
• Set the creative bar for outsourced work: brief and quality-control design and video vendors

Design & Content Production

• Support and/or lead storytelling projects with strong visual elements, from videos, photo stories to illustrations and data visualizations
• Design ad hoc materials: reports, slide decks, one-pagers, social assets, and campaign visuals
• Build reusable templates so the team keeps producing well-designed materials after your contract ends

Requirements

Required Skills

• 6+ years in brand and digital design, with a portfolio showing brand systems and web/UX work
• Strategic branding experience: you've built or evolved brand systems and can explain the thinking behind them
• Strong UX and web design skills; fluent in Figma; comfortable in WordPress
• Climate or clean energy experience, and experience working globally or regionally
• Fluent English, and self-managing in an async, distributed team
• Experience working globally or regionally, across cultures and time zones
• You use AI tools daily and critically: to work faster on drafts, research, and analysis - while knowing exactly where they fall short of your own voice and judgment
• Hungry to learn: you pick up new tools, formats, and platforms before anyone asks you to

We hope you bring one or more of these bonus skills

• Front-end skills (HTML, CSS, some JavaScript) for refinements beyond standard WordPress blocks
• Motion design and video editing
• Nonprofit, philanthropy, or climate-sector clients
• Experience designing for entrepreneur or startup audiences

Benefits

Send your CV, portfolio, and a one-page cover letter with a short note on how you would take on this role in the first few months and what you would like to achieve.

• Application deadline: Priority deadline is 14 August 2026 and applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until filled. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by 21 August 2026.
• Interview process: Qualified applicants will participate in a series of interviews via Zoom. There will be 2-3 rounds of interviews.
• Accommodation: If you require accommodations during the interview process, please contact us with your request.

New Energy Nexus is an equal employment opportunity employer and does not discriminate against applicants or employees because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, citizenship status, disability status, genetic information, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression of an otherwise qualified individual, or membership in any other class protected by applicable law. New Energy Nexus hires and promotes individuals on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled. We strongly encourage applicants from under-represented and marginalized communities to apply.