Associate Director, Product Strategy (US)

Overview

An Associate Director, Product Strategy who owns strategy workstreams within larger engagements, takes on growing client relationship responsibility, and bridges strategy into actionable delivery, using AI tools actively across research, synthesis, prototyping and deliverable creation.

What you'll do

• Own discovery workstreams within engagements, including competitive research, stakeholder interviews and user needs synthesis, and translate outputs into clear, actionable product insights.
• Develop product frameworks, vision documents and roadmap inputs that reflect a clear strategic point of view, grounded in business goals and user reality.
• Translate that thinking into sequenced, scoped direction, defining what gets built first and why in terms a client and a delivery team can both follow.
• Build and apply prioritization models that help clients make deliberate decisions about where to focus.
• Facilitate alignment sessions with the confidence to move a room from competing options to a clear position, including in the face of disagreement, rather than presenting trade-offs and leaving the call to someone else.
• Ensure strategic direction is expressed in terms a delivery team can act on, reviewing, shaping and where needed writing user stories that carry the intent of the strategy without losing specificity or getting lost in abstraction.
• Contribute to defining success metrics for engagements, use data and research outputs to validate strategic recommendations, and flag confidently when a direction needs revisiting.
• Apply AI tools independently across research, synthesis, prototyping and deliverable creation, with developing judgment about where they sharpen thinking and where human interpretation is what matters.
• Begin advising clients on where AI thinking can be embedded into their teams and ways of working, under senior direction.
• Support Senior Directors in new business contexts and develop junior practitioners through active coaching.

What you'll need

• 6+ years of experience in product strategy, digital strategy, or a related role.
• A track record of owning strategy workstreams with limited oversight.
• Strong working knowledge across the core areas of strategic product work, with the ability to structure a discovery, develop a vision, build a prioritization model, interpret analysis and ensure strategic intent is expressed in delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to translate strategic thinking into concrete, actionable direction, including shaping or reviewing user stories and product requirements so a delivery team can work from them without losing the strategic intent.
• Comfort facilitating workshops, presenting to senior stakeholders, holding a clear position under pushback, and making trade-off calls when full alignment isn't achievable.
• Ability to synthesize competitive research, user data and business context into product recommendations that go beyond best practice, with a clear, defensible point of view.
• Active, independent fluency with AI tools for research, synthesis, prototyping and deliverable creation, with developing judgment about where they help and where they fall short.
• Emerging understanding of AI as an organizational capability, and beginning confidence in surfacing those implications for clients.
• Demonstrated ability to develop junior practitioners and manage defined project workstreams with reliability and independence.

Nice to have

• Experience carrying strategy work through to delivery decisions or measurable outcomes.

Details

• Location: New York, New York, United States; Remote.
• Compensation target range: $125,000 - $160,000, influenced by skill set, level of experience and location.