Client Strategy Director

Digital Surgeons; New Haven (CT); On-site; USD 115,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Digital Surgeons in New Haven, CT is seeking a Brand Strategy Director to own strategic leadership across branding projects. You will partner with founders and senior client teams, shape messaging, and drive discovery, briefs, and decisions while keeping the work creative and on track.

We value ownership, strong writing, and the ability to connect business goals with creative outcomes. This role emphasizes collaboration, client trust, and delivering high-impact branding programs.

Qualifications

• Deep experience in branding, strategy, messaging, or closely related field.
• Strong writing instincts; push language from generic to specific.
• Able to lead discovery sessions and stakeholder interviews.
• Comfort working directly with founders and senior executives.
• Strong commercial instincts; recognize client needs vs. selling.
• Excellent facilitation skills and meeting management.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day strategic direction for branding projects.
• Turn conversations into clear briefs and decisions.
• Develop positioning, messaging, narrative, and verbal strategy.
• Set the creative team up with context, clarity, and direction.
• Own client communications, cadence, expectations, decisions, and scope.
• Keep projects moving while protecting quality and the relationship.
• Spot friction early and solve problems before they become drama.
• Collaborate with founders on key strategic moments and relationship growth.

Skills

Brand strategy

Client relationship management

Facilitation

Strategic storytelling

Workshop leadership

Job description

Digital Surgeons is looking for a rare kind of person. Part brand strategist. Part writer. Part client partner. Part creative producer.

This is not a traditional account management job. We do not need someone to traffic requests, take notes, and keep a project plan warm. We need someone who can walk into a room with a founder or executive, hear what they are saying, notice what they are not saying, and help the team find the real problem worth solving.

You will become the primary strategic partner for our branding clients. You will own the relationship from kickoff through delivery, lead discovery and strategy conversations, help shape messaging, turn conversations into sharp briefs, manage feedback and decisions, and keep the work moving without turning the creative process into bureaucracy.

Being in the room early does not make this a sales job. No pricing, no negotiating, no chasing clients. You will own whether we understand the problem before anyone proposes a solution.

You will work directly with our founder and our client partners, and internally with our creative leads, who own the visual expression and design craft delivery of our studio. Your job is to create the conditions for great creative work and make sure the client feels heard, guided, challenged, and excited along the way, and the creative leads have clear requirements to build from.

You will also stay close enough to the business to recognize what a client needs next. A great brand project should not end with a goodbye email. It might lead to a brand toolkit, a website, a campaign, a content system, digital products, new technology, or another problem we can help solve.

What you'll own

• Become the day-to-day strategic lead and trusted partner for branding Lead discovery sessions, stakeholder interviews, workshops, strategy reviews, and client presentations.
• Turn messy conversations, competing opinions, and business goals into clear briefs and decisions.
• Help develop positioning, messaging, narrative, naming, and verbal strategy when the work calls for it.
• Set our creative lead up for success with context, clarity, useful feedback, and strong creative direction.
• Own client communication, meeting cadence, expectations, decisions, scope awareness, and follow-through.
• Keep projects moving while protecting the quality of the work and the relationship.
• Spot friction early. Solve problems before they become drama.
• Build trust with senior clients so they see you as a thinking partner, not a vendor.
• Identify natural opportunities to expand the relationship when there is a real client need we can solve.
• Partner directly with the founder on key strategic moments, major presentations, and relationship growth.

Who we think will thrive here

Your background may not fit neatly into one box. In fact, that’s the point.

You may have been a brand strategist, copywriter, messaging strategist, account director, creative strategist, producer, or someone who has worn several of those hats inside a great boutique studio.

You probably have:

• Deep experience in branding, strategy, messaging, creative services, or a closely related field.
• Strong writing instincts. You can hear when language is generic and push until it gets specific.
• Enough visual taste and design literacy to have a smart creative conversation without needing to be the person pushing pixels.
• A natural ability to make clients feel comfortable, understood, and confident.
• The confidence to challenge a client without making the room weird.
• Strong facilitation skills. You know how to run a meeting that actually gets somewhere.
• High ownership. You do not wait around for someone to tell you what the next move is.
• Strong commercial instincts. You can recognize the difference between helping a client and selling them something they do not need.
• Comfort working directly with founders and senior executives.
• A love for the craft. You care about the quality of the thinking and the work, not just whether the project shipped.

This could be especially interesting if you have spent time at an agency or studio and thought, “I love the work and the clients. I just want more ownership, less machinery, and a closer seat to the decisions.”

What this role is not

• This is not a traffic manager role.
• This is not a pure project manager role.
• This is not a messenger. You do not forward the client's words to the creative leads, or the creative leads' work back to the client, without adding judgment.
• This is not a salesperson wearing a strategy costume.
• This is not a job where you disappear into Slack and send status updates all day.

We want someone who likes being in the room.

How we work

You will report directly to the founder and work closely with a small senior team. We are rebuilding more in-person creative energy into the studio, so we want someone who can spend meaningful time with us face-to-face on our campus District New Haven, Connecticut.

You do not need to sit in the studio five days a week. You do need to believe that chemistry, trust, and some of the best thinking still happen faster when people get into a room together.

We care about judgment, curiosity, follow-through, taste, and how you make people feel. We care less about whether your resume follows a perfect agency career ladder.

Compensation + structure

We expect full-time base compensation to land in the $115,000-$140,000 range, with performance-based upside tied to client health, retention, successful delivery, and relationship growth.

The exact structure will depend on experience and the shape of the role we build together.

How to apply

Don’t send us your resume. Send us a short video (under 5 minutes please) and links to some of the finished projects you’ve led. Tell us about a time a client came in asking for one thing and you realized they actually needed something else. What did you notice, what did you do, and what happened next?

We care more about your story than a perfectly polished cover letter and job history.

If you have examples of positioning, messaging, strategy, workshops, client work, or creative briefs you are proud of, include a couple. They do not need to be fancy case studies. We want to see how you think.

How to send it

Email everything to [e-mail] with the subject line: Brand Strategy Director - [Your Name]

What the process looks like

• The video and links above.
• A conversation with our ops lead and our creative director, to tell you about us and to hear more from you.
• We said this job is about being in the room, so the interview is the room.
• Forty-five minutes in the studio with the founder. He will play the founder of a company that has come to us wanting a rebrand, and you will run the conversation however you would actually run it. Nothing to prepare, nothing to build, no slides.

We aim to go from the first video to a decision in about two weeks.