Director of Experience Strategy

Velir is seeking a Director of Experience Strategy to lead experience-driven strategy across complex client engagements.

This is a senior, hands-on role for a strategist who works in close proximity to delivery. You will shape grounded experience visions, partner deeply with design and delivery teams, and stay actively involved as work moves from framing into execution and optimization.

This role is not about overseeing from a distance. You are expected to be in the work, close to decisions, and accountable for the clarity, usefulness, and impact of the strategy you help define.

Responsibilities:

Set Grounded Experience Vision

• Lead the creation of experience visions that align business goals, customer needs, brand intent, and delivery realities.
• Help clients and internal teams clearly articulate what problem they are solving and why it matters.
• Translate ambiguity into clear strategic frames that design, UX, engineering, and data teams can act on.
• Use research tools, data analysis, and AI-assisted synthesis where appropriate to accelerate understanding and surface patterns, while applying judgment to define direction.
• Define success in business terms, not just experience metrics.

Diagnose Client Challenges Deeply

• Lead discovery and strategy efforts that go beyond surface-level requirements gathering.
• Develop a deep understanding of client business models, operating constraints, and competitive context.
• Leverage qualitative research, analytics, and AI-supported analysis to identify behavioral patterns, friction points, and opportunity areas.
• Quantify, where possible, the business impact of experience challenges and strategic recommendations.
• Ground strategy in evidence, insight, and informed judgment, not assumption or novelty.

Partner Closely with Design

• Work as a true partner to design leadership and UX teams.
• Provide clear intent, priorities, and constraints so creative work is purposeful and focused.
• Participate actively in concept development, journey definition, and experience narrative creation.
• Use AI thoughtfully to explore concepts, test variations, or accelerate iteration, without replacing creative authorship or critical thinking.
• Help teams navigate tradeoffs without losing sight of the experience vision.

Strategy and design are expected to operate as a single system.

Lead Strategy in Active Client Work

• Lead experience strategy from discovery through delivery and ongoing optimization.
• Stay close to delivery so strategy evolves based on learning, performance, and real constraints.
• Own strategic narratives, roadmaps, hypotheses, and prioritization decisions.
• Partner with engineering, data, experimentation, and delivery teams to ensure strategy is realized in the work.
• Apply AI where it meaningfully improves speed, clarity, or insight across planning, experimentation, personalization, and optimization workflows.

This role assumes regular, meaningful involvement in active client engagements.

Shape and Expand the Work

• Identify opportunities within client work to clarify scope, deepen engagement, or reframe the problem being solved.
• Partner with account, design, and delivery leads to shape meaningful strategic work.
• Contribute to proposals and strategic framing for new or expanded engagements.
• Use insight, data, and emerging tools to help define smarter, more relevant opportunities.
• Take ownership of the work you are involved in and the quality of the problems being addressed.

Contribute to the Strategy Practice

• Contribute to shared frameworks, POVs, and reusable strategy assets.
• Bring learnings from client work back into the organization to improve how strategy is practiced.
• Help evolve processes, tools, and ways of working, including the responsible use of AI in strategy and delivery.
• Support internal learning through case studies, reviews, and collaboration across disciplines.

What Success Looks Like

• Clients experience clarity where there was ambiguity.
• Design and delivery teams know what they are building and why.
• Strategy shows up in decisions and outcomes, not just documentation.
• Experience visions are grounded, actionable, and resilient under real-world constraints.
• Data, experimentation, and AI are used thoughtfully to improve decisions and outcomes, not as shortcuts.

Skills & Qualifications

Required

• 8–12 years of experience in experience strategy, digital strategy, or related roles.
• Strong experience partnering with design and UX teams on complex experience challenges.
• Proven ability to frame ambiguous problems and turn them into actionable direction.
• Experience leading discovery, visioning, and strategic definition in active client engagements.
• Comfort operating in uncertainty and making informed decisions without perfect information.
• Clear, confident communicator with strong writing and storytelling skills.
• Practical experience using modern tools, including AI-enabled tools, to support research, synthesis, analysis, or delivery workflows.

Preferred

• Experience in enterprise or complex digital ecosystems.
• Familiarity with experimentation, analytics, and optimization models.
• Exposure to composable platforms, CMS, CDP, or data-driven experience systems.
• Experience working within multidisciplinary teams across strategy, design, data, and engineering.

Physical Requirements:

• Frequent sitting at a desk performing work on a computer
• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions
• Travel will be required for this role

Please note that compensation packages are finalized after the interview process is concluded. We use a competency-based approach to base pay, which means it is based on the competencies and skills demonstrated for this role.