About this Specialist Position
Other agencies might call it a design internship, but we offer and expect more.
From the start, our design interns—who we call Specialists—have done real work and gained real experience. As a Design and/or Development Specialist, you’ll work 25–40 hours per week collaborating with our full-time employees, working for both our clients and Online Optimism itself. In return, we’ll make sure you receive valuable, real-world experience, hourly pay, and the opportunity to team up with leaders in the industry.
We usually hire Design Specialists who are focused primarily on graphic design work, with optional work in motion graphics animation, illustration, and web design depending on the different Specialists’ experience and interests. This summer, we’re expanding our search and welcoming graphic designers, web developers, and anyone in between to apply for this position, which we’ll then mold according to your experience and interests and our company’s needs! Read more below about what we’re looking for.
What does a Design & Development Specialist do?
If you’re serious about a career in design or development, our Specialist program is a great opportunity to build your portfolio up to what’s required for most entry-level opportunities. We’ll keep you busy!
Design Specialists tend to work across our dozens of clients, in multiple industries, meaning you’ll be following varied brand standards, switching between different types of work, and receiving assignments and feedback from multiple sources. In addition, you’d be a key part of Online Optimism’s internal graphic design team, assisting our team with work for Online Optimism itself.
A more development-focused Specialist will have a similar type of workload, working on projects across clients and styles that would include full website redesigns as well as web maintenance and support tasks and internal web design work.
Who should apply for our Design & Development Specialist position?
There are a few qualities that our most successful Specialists usually have:
- Experience handling design or development work in some sort of official capacity. We’ve certainly seen applicants come through that have exclusively freelanced, but it’s more common that strong applicants have previous agency or agency-like experience. That being said, if your portfolio includes work for several distinct brands, or you otherwise show you have the ability to work between multiple clients, we welcome and look forward to receiving your application.
- Good communication skills. We’re a highly collaborative remote team, and communication is key!
- The ability to manage their own time, without a ton of oversight. This does not mean you won’t be supported—just that we expect you can determine how to spend your time effectively to get your work done.
Our Design Director, Claire, started out at Online Optimism as a Specialist! Here’s a photo of her with her Specialist class.
This summer, we’re expanding our search a bit to include applicants who are interested in web design and development as well as graphic design. Our plan is to mold the position based on the best applicant’s experience and interests. If you fit the criteria above and you have experience and interest in any of the following, we’d love to see your application:
- Graphic design, particularly digital design
- Motion graphics animation
- Digital illustration
- Branding
- Web design, UI/UX design
- Front-end development
- WordPress development
What makes our program different from most design internships?
Here’s what we’ve heard from our past design Specialists: Our program will help you build a significant portfolio. At Online Optimism, you’ll do direct work for businesses local to our offices in New Orleans and New York City as well as for clients across the US and even internationally. In addition, depending on the circumstances and your own skills and interests, you might meet with clients, attend networking events, participate in webinars, or accompany Optimists on photoshoots. Plus, with the support of our Closing the Curtain program, our past Specialists have a high rate of success in moving from this position to full-time jobs working in-house or at agencies.
