Sr. Director, Strategy

Material; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 135,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Material is seeking a Senior Director of Strategy to lead and shape the strategy function within its Design Service Line. This senior, client-facing role requires a deep understanding of design, brand, culture, and commerce.

The ideal candidate will have over 12 years of strategy experience, proven leadership in multidisciplinary environments, and the ability to mentor a team of strategists. The position offers a hybrid work model in New York City and a competitive salary range of $135,000 - $185,000.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of strategy experience in design consultancies or brand agencies.
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize complex information into actionable strategies.
• Experience building and leading high-performing teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategic vision for multi-capability client engagements.
• Collaborate with Material's research team to design and implement strategic inquiries.
• Mentor a small team of embedded strategists.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Communication skills

Qualitative and cultural intelligence

Experience in design strategy

Leadership and team development

Job description

Location: New York City (Hybrid / Near NYC Office)

About Us

We drive intelligent growth for ambitious businesses and leading brands.

Customer understanding is more potent and drives greater value when insights go to work directly within marketing and experience priorities. To give our clients that advantage, we put an insights-driven operating system at the core of our design, go-to-market and digital experience solutions.

Material clients make smarter growth choices because they can see clearly how and when to take the shots that count. Together, we connect consumer intelligence with customer demand generation to build lasting, profitable relationships.

About The Role

Aruliden is a world-class global design agency that helps brands grow through strategy, product design, and purposeful innovation. With award-winning work spanning physical products, digital experiences, brand systems, and go-to-market creative — for clients including Google, Bulgari, Marc Jacobs, and Verizon — Aruliden has built a reputation for work that is as strategically rigorous as it is creatively bold. A recipient of numerous Red Dot awards and recognized across the industry's most competitive design honors, as part of Material, Aruliden operates at the intersection of industrial design, brand design, digital experience, and the creative strategies that bring it all to market. In 2021, Aruliden joined Material, a leading human insights and strategy company, expanding its platform while retaining its identity as a notable and distinctive design agency.

Material is seeking a Senior Director of Strategy to lead and shape the strategy function within its Design Service Line which goes to market under the brand Aruliden but also derives opportunity and engagement from its parent company. This is a senior, client-facing role at the intersection of design, brand, culture, and commerce — built for a strategist who believes the best ideas are born when rigorous inquiry meets creative ambition.

The Senior Director, Strategy will serve as the strategic backbone of a multidisciplinary design practice spanning industrial design, digital experience and product design, brand design, and creative services. Working alongside designers, researchers, and creative directors, this leader will set the strategic direction for client engagements, build and mentor a small team of embedded strategists, and help grow the practice through exceptional thinking and trusted client relationships.

This role is modeled on the tradition of strategists who operate as genuine creative partners — fluent in brand, culture, human behavior, and design systems. The Senior Director of Strategy will bring the kind of intellectual curiosity and integrative thinking that makes strategy generative, not just directional.

As an affiliate of Material's Growth Strategy service line, this leader will also participate in a broader community of practice, contributing to shared standards, new offerings, and cross-company knowledge exchange.

What You'll Do

Strategy Leadership & Client Engagement

• Lead the strategic vision for complex, multi-capability client engagements across brand, product, digital experience, packaging, and go-to-market work.
• Serve as the senior strategic voice in client relationships — capable of operating at the C‑suite level and translating business challenges into compelling design and brand opportunities.
• Drive discovery, insight synthesis, and strategic framing at the outset of projects, establishing a clear platform from which creative and design teams can work.
• Collaborate closely with Material's research and insights team to design the right inquiry, shape research approaches, and synthesize findings into strategic narratives that inspire and direct creative work.
• Develop and present strategy frameworks, brand platforms, audience archetypes, content strategies, and design principles that connect consumer understanding to creative decision‑making.
• Ensure strategic coherence across deliverables — from brand identity systems and product visions to channel activation plans and creative content strategies.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a small, dedicated team of strategists embedded within the Design Service Line — operating as a player‑coach with meaningful individual contribution alongside team oversight.
• Establish a strategic methodology and ways of working that reflect the distinctive demands of design‑led engagements — bringing rigor without sacrificing agility.
• Build the team's craft: cultivating sharp writing, clear frameworks, compelling visual communication of strategy, and the ability to hold a room.
• Create a learning environment that elevates how strategists collaborate with designers, researchers, and creative directors — modeling true cross‑functional integration.
• Define and socialize the strategy team's role within the broader Design Service Line, helping capability leads understand when and how to engage strategy.

Business Development & Growth

• Actively participate in new business development — originating opportunities, leading pitch strategy, and helping articulate the distinctive value of strategy‑led design work.
• Build and deepen client relationships that generate organic growth, positioning strategy as a lever for expanding the scope and depth of Design Service Line engagements.
• Contribute to scope development and proposal writing, with accountability for revenue targets tied to the strategy practice.
• Identify emerging client needs and market opportunities that the strategy function can help the Design Service Line address through new offerings or expanded capabilities.

Cross‑Capability Collaboration

• Partner with the leaders of the industrial design, digital experience and product design, brand design, and creative services teams to integrate strategy into the full arc of project work.
• Collaborate with the Creative Services team (go‑to‑market and channel activation) and with specialists within the Growth Strategy service line to develop content and creative strategies that connect brand intent to audience engagement.
• Help design teams articulate the strategic rationale behind their work — supporting the development of client‑facing narratives, case studies, and intellectual property.
• Champion a culture of curiosity and consumer‑centricity across the Design Service Line, bringing cultural, behavioral, and market intelligence into everyday creative dialogue.

Growth Strategy Community of Practice

• Participate as an affiliate member of Material's Growth Strategy service line community of practice — engaging in shared offsites, capability‑building sessions, and cross‑company intellectual exchange.
• Contribute to the development of new strategy offerings and frameworks that draw on the intersection of design and growth strategy disciplines.
• Share case studies, methodologies, and learnings across the broader strategy community, helping to elevate the company's collective strategic thinking.

What You'll Bring

Experience & Background

• 12+ years of strategy experience in design consultancies, brand agencies, innovation firms, or integrated creative organizations — with a track record of leading complex, multi‑disciplinary engagements.
• Demonstrated experience working across design strategy, brand strategy, and content or channel strategy — with the fluency to move between them as engagement needs evolve.
• A portfolio of work that reflects both strategic rigor and creative partnership — where strategy has demonstrably shaped design outcomes, not just preceded them.
• Experience building and leading small, high‑performing strategy teams, with a coaching orientation and a commitment to developing talent.
• Proven ability to develop new client relationships and contribute to business growth — comfortable in a selling environment and energized by the challenge of winning new work.

Skills & Ways Of Working

• Exceptional strategic thinking — able to synthesize complex information, identify the essential tension or opportunity, and frame it in a way that moves people to action.
• Strong qualitative and cultural intelligence: comfort with ethnographic research, trend analysis, cultural mapping, and consumer insight — with the judgment to know which tools fit the problem.
• The ability to design and direct research inquiries in close collaboration with research and insights specialists, and to translate findings into strategic narratives.
• Outstanding communication skills — a clear and compelling writer and presenter who can hold a room with clients, inspire a creative team, and articulate the value of strategy to skeptics.
• Fluency in the language of design — enough to be a genuine thought partner to industrial designers, experience designers, brand designers, and creative directors.
• Comfort operating as a player‑coach: willing and able to do the work at a high level while developing the people around you.
• A collaborative, generative spirit — someone who makes the work better by being in the room, not just delivering a deck.

Pay Range

Pay Range: $135,000.00 - 185,000.00

The range shown represents a grouping of relevant ranges currently in use at Material. Actual range for this position may differ, depending on location and specific skillset required for the work itself.