Director, Interior Design

Description

About MN Custom Homes

Founded in 2011 by two Bellevue locals, we have grown to become the preeminent Eastside luxury home builder today. Since Day 1 we have been driven by innovation and obsessed with setting our homes apart through their overall design and functionality. We truly get a thrill doing what we love most: building thoughtful homes that inspire community. Learn more about us and see our work at: https://mncustom.com

Why MN?

We pride ourselves on our empowered team environment and dedication to taking care of our people. We believe in setting you up to succeed with clear career progression, learning opportunities, and ownership of your role from the get-go. Accountability is huge for us, and we place a lot of trust in our employees to do the right thing. We believe that a supportive and inclusive culture yields happy people, and happy people are the most successful at what they do.

About This Role

The Interior Design Leader is responsible for elevating design excellence across the organization. This role ensures all interior designs achieve high levels of aesthetic quality, technical accuracy, customer desirability, and business viability. The position leads the creation and stewardship of scalable selection systems, including capsule collections, kits-of-parts, guardrails, and standards, that integrate buyer insights, field feedback, and market expectations. The Interior Design Leader partners closely with the Architecture Design Leader and cross-functional teams to create beautiful, livable, profitable homes aligned with company strategy.

On a Given Day, Your Work Might Include

Design Vision & Product Systemization

• Translates product strategy into interior design standards, capsule collections, kits-of-parts, and reusable selection systems.
• Defines and refines distinct capsule identities with clear stylistic parameters, ensuring collections remain differentiated, cohesive, and aligned with target buyer demographics.
• Provides creative direction that translates conceptual vision into actionable, executable design standards and minimizes downstream reinterpretation.
• Establishes clear design rationale, material strategies, and architectural alignment early in the process to support stronger decision-making and reduce rework.
• Grounds design decisions in local market and buyer-based reasoning rather than one-off preferences.
• Ensures capsule collections maintain integrity over time by evaluating reselections, vendor substitutions, and field-driven changes against original design intent.
• Builds a coherent, repeatable MN Interior Design Language.

Design Excellence & Customer Experience

• Delivers luxury-grade, cohesive interiors that translate the exterior expression into interior spaces and resonate with buyers.
• Ensures homes are holistically designed: interiors, architecture, materials, lighting, and spatial planning working together as a cohesive experience that meets target buyers' lifestyle needs.
• Drives elevated, timeless design solutions rooted in strong architectural thinking, restraint, proportion, and materiality rather than trend-chasing.
• Maintains high standards for detailing, composition, and execution so design intent translates successfully from concept through construction.
• Designs research questions and engage buyers and agents to test new ideas and validate key hypotheses.
• Uses buyer insights, market comps, and lifestyle data to guide design direction.

Margin Improvement Through Smarter Design & Procurement Partnership

• Partners with Procurement to strategically source capsule collections.
• Improves margins via standardization and value engineering.
• Ensures designs meet customer needs while conforming to project budgets.
• Leads "Design-to-Value" work to determine high-impact features.

Cycle-Time Reduction through Technology & AI

• Implements AI-enabled workflows across selection tools, visualization, and digital libraries.
• Drives simplification and automation of ID deliverables, including migration to Revit and related technologies, to improve coordination, speed, accuracy, consistency, scalability, and reduce downstream errors.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partners with Architecture, Procurement, Construction, Land Acquisition, Sales, Home Experience, and Marketing teams to align design goals.
• Champions clear ownership and accountability structures across cross-functional teams.
• Represents design intent in design reviews, cross-functional decisions, and executive discussions.
• Ensures alignment between design systems, operational constraints, and customer expectations.
• Builds a culture of creative partnership where design cohesion is a shared outcome, not a downstream hand-off.

Leadership & Team Development

• Leads a team of designers (approximately 5-8) with a mentorship mindset: actively developing and inspiring designers through coaching, technical guidance, collaborative critique, and strategic involvement rather than task delegation.
• Fosters an environment where designers contribute ideas, build category ownership, and strengthen cross-functional confidence with Architecture, Procurement, Construction, Land Acquisition, Sales, Home Experience, and Marketing.
• Provides clear, timely, and actionable feedback that helps designers grow both creatively and technically.
• Builds trust through transparency, consistency, and clear communication, ensuring teams understand priorities, expectations, and the reasoning behind key design decisions.
• Establishes clear expectations, accountability structures, workflows, and development pathways.
• Identifies and helps recruit strong design talent aligned with organizational needs.
• Participates in all employee lifecycle activities including but not limited to: interviewing, onboarding, training, mentoring, conducting weekly 1-on-l's, just-in-time coaching, disciplinary actions, performing regular performance reviews, and offboarding.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep understanding of luxury residential design, including how interior design, architecture, procurement, and construction interrelate.
• Experience working directly with homeowners to solicit input and feedback and address key needs and expectations.
• Strong interior design portfolio demonstrating aesthetic judgment, technical capability, and systems thinking.
• Experience developing reusable design assets, standards, or scalable selection libraries.
• Ability to balance feasibility, desirability, and viability in all design decisions.
• Ability to provided elevated aesthetic, experiential, and technical design quality across all projects.
• Ability to deliver an improved customer satisfaction, lovability, and alignment with luxury buyer expectations.
• Demonstrates a consistent use and adoption of reusable design assets, modules, and standards.
• Able to create a positive impact on margin performance through efficient design systems, use of technology and AI, and smarter design decisions.
• Able to create a reduction in plan defects and design-related rework through systemized design standards.
• Strong understanding of residential construction, critical path order, building codes, and trade coordination.
• Familiarity with Revit or BIM-based workflows; experience supporting Materials & Details migration a plus.
• Hands-on experience working with homeowners a plus.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills; able to articulate design intent clearly.
• Ability to lead through influence with a low-ego, coaching-first approach.
• Demonstrates a strong executive presence.
• Planning and Functional Alignment: Ability to develop a 1 to 3-year functional strategy aligned to company objectives and translate organizational priorities into clear roadmaps, OKRs, and team-level performance expectations.
• Change Leadership: Skilled in leading significant change initiatives using structured change management practices, including communication planning, milestone tracking, and feedback loops that keep teams informed and engaged through transitions.
• Leader Development and Succession: Demonstrated ability to identify, develop, and sponsor emerging leaders within the function; builds coaching capacity in direct-report managers so leadership capability compounds across team layers.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration and Systems Thinking: Ability to break down silos by partnering across departments on shared objectives, and to understand how functional decisions ripple across the broader organization before acting.
• Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Climate: Skilled in setting the emotional tone for the organization, creating conditions where honest feedback flows in both directions, and responding to team health issues before they become systemic.
• Ownership and Executive Communication: Ability to own functional budgets, OKRs, and operational metrics with full accountability; proactively communicates status and surfaces risks to executive leadership without waiting to be asked.
• Future-Focused and Data-Informed Decision Making: Knowledge of industry trends, competitive landscape, and emerging technologies; uses data to improve functional performance and positions the team to build capabilities needed 3-5 years out.
• Servant Leadership at Scale: Ability to position themselves as a resource rather than a decision-maker for everything; delegates broadly, invests time in developing the leadership team, and creates organizational conditions (structure, culture, resources) that let others do their best work.

What You Bring to MN Custom Homes

• Bachelor's degree in interior design or a related field required. Master's degree preferred.

• NCIDQ certification preferred.

• 10+ years of residential interior design experience, with a focus on luxury single-family homes.

• 5+ years leading interior design teams in the residential construction or homebuilding industry.

• Strong command of:

• Interior design principles and luxury residential aesthetics

• Material and finish specifications

• Housing code compliance (local & national)

• Construction documentation and trade coordination

• Procurement and sourcing processes

• Proficiency with design visualization and selection software.

• Proven experience influencing executives and leading cross-functional initiatives.

• Strong understanding of cost drivers and value-engineering techniques.

Working Environment & Physical Requirements

• This position requires frequent use of a computer, including keyboard functions and visual acuity of 20 inches or fewer on a daily basis.
• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk, working on a computer, and attending meetings.
• Ability to move throughout an office environment frequently throughout the day.
• Must be able to work in office Monday - Friday, within core business hours of 8AM-5PM.

Travel & Vehicle Requirements

• Infrequent travel to residential home projects, vendors, off-site meetings and/or other markets outside of WA state.
• If/when local travel is required using personal vehicle, possession of a valid WA State Driver's License and valid vehicle insurance is required. Mileage reimbursement is provided by the Company.

Employee Benefits

• 100% covered employee premiums for medical and dental self-coverage
• 100% employer-paid life insurance
• 100 % employer-paid long term disability insurance
• Paid medical and family leave
• Critical illness insurance
• 401(K) with generous company match, no vesting schedule, and access to professional financial advisors
• Lifestyle reimbursement account
• 20 days of PTO & 9 holidays
• New iPhone for your personal and business use
• Free onsite parking
• Company paid events
• Complimentary snacks & beverages

Hours & Compensation

This is a full-time position paying $115,500 - $214,500 (+ discretionary bonus). The base salary range represents the anticipated low and high end of the salary range for this position. Individual placement within a salary range will vary based upon factors including but not limited to candidate experience, knowledge, individual, skills, and organizational performance.

Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At MN Custom Homes we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you are excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. MN Custom Homes is an equal opportunity employer.