Job Description

JOB SUMMARY

The Vice President, Global Design Strategies is responsible for defining the physical manifestation of Marriott's brands, building the global design systems that enable hotels around the world to deliver distinctive, high-quality, and consistently executed experiences at scale.

This leader is responsible for creating design strategies, standards, and scalable platforms that shape how Marriott's brands come to life in the built environment across the world. They will translate brand vision into globally consistent, insight-driven design systems that continents can localize and execute with clarity, speed, and precision.

At the intersection of brand, architecture, interiors, and guest experience, the Vice President will contribute to the development and evolution of global brand business blueprints, ensuring that each brand is expressed through compelling, cohesive physical environments that are both differentiated and operationally viable for associates and owners.

A critical dimension of this role is reimagining how design gets done, building streamlined processes and tools that reduce complexity, accelerating speed to market, and enable more efficient development and execution globally. This leader will create conditions for teams to move faster while maintaining design integrity and brand consistency.

The role plays a pivotal part in advancing Marriott's ambition to deliver the industry's most distinctive and scalable design solutions, creating high-impact design frameworks and processes that enable faster development, stronger brand expression, and consistent quality across markets.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Education and Experience

Required
• 4-year degree from an accredited university in architecture, design, or related discipline
• 12 years of progressive leadership experience in global design strategy, physical environment design or brand-led product development
• Demonstrated success defining and delivering scalable design systems, standards, and frameworks that enable consistent execution across diverse markets
• Provide ability to lead large, cross-functional initiatives, translating brand vision into practical, implementable design solutions at scale
• Experience building or transforming design processes, tools, or operating models to simplify complexity, accelerate speed-to-market, and improve execution quality
• Strong leadership capability, with experience developing high-performing teams and influencing senior executives and enterprise stakeholders

Preferred
• Experience operating in a global role, building enterprise capabilities that are adopted and executed across regions or business units
• Deep expertise in hospitality or mixed-use design, including guestroom, public spaces, and F&B environments, with a strong understanding of owner economics and development considerations
• Track record of designing or implementing modular, adaptable design standards that balance global consistency with local flexibility
• Experience leveraging customer insights, performance data, and market intelligence to inform design decisions and continuously refine global frameworks
• Familiarity with digital tools, platforms, or systems that enable design standardization, collaboration, and faster development cycles
• Master's degree in architecture, design, business, or related field

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES

Global Design Strategy
• Define and evolve Marriott's global physical design strategy, creating enterprise-level frameworks that guide how brands are expressed through architecture, interiors, and the built environment
• Translate consumer insights, market trends, and brand positioning into scalable design direction, concepts, and standards that can be consistently applied across markets
• Establish and embed core brand design principles and systems that ensure clarity, differentiation, and consistency while enabling flexibility for local execution
• Ensure all design strategies are build for scalability, owner feasibility, and speed-to-market, balancing creativity with operational practicality

Product Development & Brand Blueprint Ownership
• Contribute to the development and evolution of global brand business blueprints as enterprise platforms, integrating physical design (guestroom, public spaces, F&B), service design, and operational standards into cohesive actionable systems
• Create streamlined, modular design standards and toolkits that enable continents to efficiently localize and execute while maintaining brand integrity
• Ensure design intent is clearly articulated and easily transferable, reducing complexity and increasing consistency across global properties
• Partner with development, owners, and external design partners to ensure design frameworks are practical, implementable, and deliver value at scale

Design Operations, Process Innovation & Speed Enablement
• Reimagine and lead how design is delivered by building simplified, scalable processes, tools, and governance models that accelerate speed and reduce friction across the development lifecycle
• Identify and eliminate inefficiencies in design and approval processes, enabling faster decision-making and more efficient global execution
• Develop and embed repeatable design workflows, playbooks, and digital tools that improve quality, consistency, and time-to-market
• Balance speed with design integrity, ensuring streamlined processes do not compromise brand expression or guest experience
• Partner across disciplines to align design processes with development, operations, and digital workflows creating a more integrated and agile system

Global Adaptation & Market Relevance
• Design global standards and systems that are inherently flexible and adaptable, enabling continents to respond to local market, cultural, and regulatory requirements
• Provide clear guardrails that empower regions to localize effectively while maintaining brand consistency
• Enable continents through well-defined frameworks and toolkits, reducing rework and increasing speed and quality of execution globally
• Balance global consistency with local relevance to optimize guest experience, owner outcomes, and market performance

Team Leadership & Capability Building
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performance Center-based design strategy and design operations team focused on enterprise impact
• Foster a culture of innovation, simplification, and continuous improvement, with a strong emphasis on scalability and speed
• Strengthen enterprise capabilities by development talent, tools, and ways of working that elevate how Marriott designs and delivers physical environments globally
• Partner closely with continent teams to ensure strong adoption of global frameworks and continuous feedback loops to improve them over time

Marriott HQ is committed to a hybrid work environment that enables associates to Be connected. Headquarters-based positions are considered hybrid, for candidates within a commuting distance to Bethesda, MD; candidates outside of commuting distance to Bethesda, MD will be considered for Remote positions.

About the Team

Marriott International is the world's largest hotel company, with more brands, more hotels and more opportunities for associates to grow and succeed. Be where you can do your best work, begin your purpose, belong to an amazing global team, and become the best version of you.