STOOP STUDIO / CAREERS
Studio Director
NEW YORK, NY
THE ROLE
Studio Director
Full-time · Onsite in New York, NY · Reports to the Founder & Creative Director
The Role
Stoop Studio is a full-service interior design studio specializing in the transformation of New York City townhouses. We lead creative direction and interior design, collaborating with architects, builders, and specialist makers as projects move from early planning through installation.
We are building a studio capable of sustaining ambitious work without compromising the quality of the design or the attention given to each project.
The Studio Director leads the Stoop Studio design team, providing the design leadership, operational rigor, and sound judgment that keep exceptional work moving. Working closely with the Founder & Creative Director, who sets the overall creative vision, they carry that vision through the studio: leading design leads, resolving day-to-day design decisions, developing the team, and keeping every project progressing with clarity, consistency, and an uncompromising standard of quality.
This is as much a design leadership role as an operational one. We are looking for an exceptional designer who has grown into an exceptional leader.
It is a highly autonomous seat. The Studio Director will have meaningful latitude to shape how the studio evolves, refining the systems, rhythms, team, and culture that allow the work to scale without compromising its standards.
What We're Building
Stoop Studio’s work began with hands-on restoration and reinvention of historic New York townhouses. Today our full-service design process spans architecture and space planning collaboration, materials and millwork, kitchens and bathrooms, furniture, sourcing, procurement, and final installation.
Alongside commissioned design work, Stoop Development acquires and redevelops select historic townhouses. Both practices share an emphasis on considered design and strong execution.
The Studio Director sits at the center of the people, design decisions, schedules, and standards behind that work.
Key Responsibilities
Design Direction & Guidance
• Work with the Creative Director at the outset of each project, combining the client’s vision and the Creative Director’s direction into a clear brief the design leads can run with.
• Be an active design resource for the team and design leads, bringing a strong point of view to decisions throughout a project and knowing which creative calls should return to the Creative Director.
• Run the studio’s internal design reviews, giving design leads clear, useful feedback that strengthens the work before it reaches the Creative Director.
• Hold the Stoop Studio design language and standard across every project, so the work is unmistakably ours.
• Protect the design intent from concept through installation, so what gets approved is what gets built.
• Bring deep industry experience to the team, helping designers navigate challenges with practical judgment.
Team Leadership & Development
• Serve as direct manager for the studio’s design leads, responsible for weekly 1:1s, growth plans, deadline tracking, performance management, and process.
• Develop the team, setting clear growth priorities and coaching design leads to become stronger designers, decision-makers, and managers.
• Help shape the future studio organization, identifying capability gaps and recommending when and where the team needs to grow.
• Uphold a high standard across design critique, project leadership, presentations, documentation, communication, and execution.
• Build a studio culture great designers want to stay in: high standards, low ego, and real mentorship.
Operations, Schedules & Capacity
• Create and oversee the workback schedule for active projects: design milestones, review cadence, deliverable timelines, and dependency mapping.
• Maintain a continuous cross-project read on FF&E budgets, procurement, and design schedules. Catch drift early and escalate with options.
• Oversee and evolve the studio’s SOPs and playbook, revisiting templates, checklists, handoff packages, systems, and software as the studio grows, and ensuring consistent adoption across every project.
• Run the studio’s rhythm, Creative Director reviews and weekly studio sync, preparing for each and driving follow-through afterward.
• Work with the founders to structure and staff project teams by phase, skill fit, and bandwidth, maintaining a live read on studio capacity and team health.
• Maintain consistent documentation, file, CAD, and drawing standards, so any project can be picked up by any teammate without translation.
Required Qualifications
• 8 to 12+ years in a high-end residential, commercial, hospitality, or architectural studio, including significant experience leading design teams and complex projects.
• A senior design leader with a demonstrated track record of leading and developing a studio, ideally someone who has grown from design into leadership rather than moving exclusively into operations.
• A proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams, including hiring, mentoring, developing, retaining, and managing performance.
• Deep fluency in the design process, from concept and schematic design through documentation, procurement, and installation, with the design judgment to guide the work, make sound decisions, and elevate other designers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design or Architecture, or equivalent professional experience.
Ideal Experience & Skills
• A strong design point of view. Able to read a drawing set, weigh in on the work, make sound design decisions, and give design leads clear, useful guidance, paired with the judgment to know which creative calls belong with the Creative Director.
• Fluency in how design budgets and workback schedules actually behave, and an eye for how AI can compress the work without compressing the standard.
• Experience building and improving studio systems: SOPs, templates, resourcing models, and the software that runs them.
• Background in boutique, design-driven, quality-obsessed environments where execution rigor and creative ambition are equally non-negotiable.
Personal Attributes
• Self-directed and proactive. This seat creates leverage for leadership rather than consuming it.
• Calm under pressure. Direct in feedback.
• High standard, low ego. A builder of culture and of people.
• A sensibility that fits Stoop Studio: layered, timeless, eclectic, moody, considered.
Please include your résumé, selected work, and a brief introduction.
BUILD WITH US.
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