The role
You'd lead identity work — building brand systems from strategy through to the guidelines document, for clients across beauty, automotive, F&B and media. Not executing someone else's direction. Setting it.
The part that makes this harder and more interesting than most senior design roles in the region: every identity you build has to work natively in Kurdish, Arabic and English from day one. Not a Latin system with Arabic bolted on afterwards. Type systems that hold across three scripts, layouts that survive RTL, a logo that doesn't fall apart in a language it wasn't drawn for. If you've done it, you know it's a real discipline. If you haven't, this is where you'd learn it.
You'd also be the most senior designer in the room for juniors coming up, which means some of the job is teaching.
Why Pomelo
- Six disciplines, one building. Brand, web, video, social, paid, SEO. Most projects use three or four together, and you'd sit next to the people doing the rest.
- Iraq's brands, not Iraq's budgets. Tecno, Talabat, Al Mouyassar, Xiaomi, Holdal, Chery. The client list is why people stay.
- Erbil and Baghdad, working in three languages. Everything we make is built natively in Kurdish, Arabic and English, not translated afterwards.
What we need
- 5+ years in graphic design, with brand identity as the core of your portfolio.
- Evidence you've built systems, not just artefacts — guidelines, type scales, component libraries.
- Fluent in Adobe CC; comfortable handing off to web and motion teams.
- Working knowledge of AI design tools — Midjourney, Firefly, or equivalent — and a point of view on where they belong in a brand process and where they don't.
- Kurdish or Arabic plus working English. Arabic typography experience is a strong advantage.
- Portfolio required. We'll look at process as much as outcome.
- Based in Erbil or able to relocate before starting.