Epsilon careers highlight – Creative Technologist

Whether you’re looking to grow in a similar role or change career paths, Epsilon has a number of job openings that may be suited for you!

One role that exemplifies the distinctive specialties offered at Epsilon is the Creative Technologist. A Creative Technologist is a uniquely positioned role that sits on the Client Creative Team at Epsilon. They are responsible for being a true innovator and an expert in automation, elevating the technical vision, execution, and strategy of the team while also bringing creative ideation and problem-solving skills to the table.

To learn more about what a Creative Technologist role is all about, we sat down with Senior Creative Technologist Chris Taylor who embodies all the above.

What does a Creative Technologist do?

When it comes to his specific role, Chris handles custom display ad requests. While there are a lot of built-in functions that already exist when it comes to display ads, his teams deals with ads that are custom, interactive and require more of an animation aspect – in short, something that hasn’t been done before. When new technology pops up, like Augmented Realty (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), new prototypes are created. Chris and his team figure out how they can incorporate these new tech developments into display ad standards and code them into existence (typically using JavaScript).

Who does a Creative Technologist work with?

The Creative Technologist role sits on the Client Creative team and the most frequent collaborators are other creative team members. More specifically, our Creative Technologists typically work closely with art directors and digital producers. Since Creative Technologists aren’t client facing, it is the responsibility of Art Directors to define what the client’s needs are and hand off the project to the Creative team. Other roles that interact with Creative Technologists include Account Managers and Client Integration Engineers.

While the role is collaborative, once the project is handed off from the Art Directors, the coding is done independently. The entire Creative Tech team encompasses a handful of people, creating a tight knit group, but each person on the team has their own project – an aspect Chris enjoys as an independent worker.

What attributes are you looking for in a Creative Technologist?

Problem solving skills and an innovative mindset are fundamental aspects to a Creative Technologist’s role. Due to the uniqueness of each project, the forward-looking role presents a new and different problem to solve each time. The need to incorporate ground-breaking tech, keeps the role fresh – it’s not about following the same set of steps for each project.

Chris recalls times where he has shown Art Directors a crazy amination – mostly as a joke. As opposed to saying it’s cool and moving on, the Art Directors have loved it and the seemingly crazy idea actually came to fruition. Curiosity and taking risks is key to success – whether it’s serving up crazy ideas that become a reality or inspiring others with projects like serving ads in the metaverse.

What is a misconception about the role?

Chris shared that a common misconception is that his role involves working on building ads from scratch. In his role, a lot of the ad is built in already, but he needs to add in a custom piece to it, for example an animation aspect. That said, when he’s working on building out digital banner ads, his parents think he builds websites. 😊

Does the role sound interesting but you’re still not sure?

Chris didn’t imagine himself in this sort of role growing up in fact when he was younger, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He always had an interest in coding and programming and as a video game enthusiast even considered being involved in making them. However, before coming upon the creative tech space, Chris was actually in the accounting field. During his accounting days he realized that using excel macros had similarities to programming, which inspired him to teach himself web design and ultimately land in this role - talk about a career change!

Interested in seeing what job opportunities we have to offer? Epsilon has plenty of openings that you can check out on our Careers Page.