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Instrument is a design and technology company. We build brands, products, and experiences that move businesses forward—by making the complex simple.
For over 20 years, we’ve partnered with companies like Google, ServiceNow, Uber, Eventbrite, and ŌURA, helping them navigate change, launch new ideas, and grow with intention.
Our work spans Brand, Marketing, and Product, but what defines us is how we work. We bring strategy, design, and engineering together from the start, moving quickly from idea to execution and refining as we go. We aim to do great work and be great to work with, because both matter.
We’re a collaborative, hands-on team with roots in Portland and New York and a distributed presence across the U.S. and Europe. We build teams around the needs of the work, staying nimble without sacrificing craft.
We value curiosity, perspective, and continuous learning, and we’re committed to building an inclusive environment where people can do their best work.
If that sounds like you, we’d love to meet you.
We are looking for a Strategy Director who leads across strategy types, goes deep with a client, and builds teams that people want to be on.
This is a dedicated account role with real range. You will embed deeply with one major client and lead strategy across the full breadth of their business, spanning product, web, marketing, brand, and content. That means holding the thread across a high volume of simultaneous workstreams and consistently keeping quality high. You will be the connective tissue that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts, a trusted strategic voice with the client and a genuine creative and account partner internally.
This role is, importantly, also a growth role. You will help shape the account relationship, spot and develop new opportunities, and bring a business development instinct that contributes to pitches and proactively expands the work we do within this account. You’ll be expected to invest in the business and in the people around you, building a team culture where strategists are challenged, supported, and doing their best work.
If you love going wide and deep with one client, move fluidly between visionary thinking and high-craft execution, and get genuinely energized by building things, whether that is a pitch, a team, or a lasting client relationship, we want to hear from you.
What You'll Do
- Shape the strategic vision and craft across multiple client engagements and portfolios.
- Serve as senior strategic lead on select complex or high-impact accounts.
- Ensure strategic rigor, clarity, and coherence across projects, from discovery through delivery.
- Guide teams in navigating ambiguity and complexity with sound judgment.
- Define and evolve the standards for what strong strategy looks like, ensuring consistency and quality across teams and engagements.
- Shape how strategy is practiced across teams by establishing frameworks, approaches, and ways of working that scale impact.
- Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior and executive-level client stakeholders.
- Partner with Client Executive Directors and account leadership to identify and grow new opportunities.
- Present strategic direction and recommendations with confidence, credibility, and influence.
- Balance client advocacy with business objectives and delivery realities.
- Shape long-term client strategy and partnership direction, aligning strategic work to broader business goals and growth opportunities.
- Hire, manage, and develop strategists across levels, building a strong and resilient team.
- Set clear expectations for performance, growth, and accountability, and hold leaders accountable for outcomes.
- Foster a culture of strategic excellence, collaboration, and inclusion.
- Ensure team health, resourcing balance, and sustainable delivery.
- Define, codify, and implement clear, repeatable strategic standards and frameworks that elevate quality, improve efficiency, and create consistency across engagements.
- Develop and pilot new ways of working that strengthen collaboration, rigor, and strategic clarity across teams.
- Contribute to internal learning, workshops, and knowledge sharing that scale best practices across the discipline.
- Support new business efforts, pitches, and strategic framing.
- Continuously evolve the discipline by identifying gaps, raising the bar for quality, and ensuring standards keep pace with the work and market within the assigned Studio.
- Practices Creative Intelligence by staying curious about emerging tools and technologies (including AI) and applying sound judgment about when and how they should inform the work. Continuously learns and experiments while keeping human needs, craft, and responsibility at the center.
- Shapes how emerging technology is adopted across engagements, connecting innovation to client outcomes and sustainable delivery.
- Advanced fluency in research, synthesis, facilitation, and executive storytelling tools.
- Confident use of planning, resourcing, and collaboration systems to manage complex portfolios.
- Leadership in adopting tools and methods that scale strategic excellence.
What You'll Bring
- Advanced fluency in research, synthesis, facilitation, and executive storytelling tools.
- Confident use of planning, resourcing, and collaboration systems to manage complex portfolios.
- Leadership in adopting tools and methods that scale strategic excellence.
- 10+ years of strategy experience including projects for large and small brands
- 3+ years of experience leading a small strategy team
- Broad set of strategy skills and experiences across digital, brand, content, UX/UI, marketing and business consulting, with deeper skills in 2 or more of these areas
- Experience leveraging qualitative and quantitative research frameworks and techniques to gain informed insights to drive creative vision and concepts
- Experience designing and leading workshops with senior to C-suite level clients leveraging strategic design-thinking frameworks
- Experience working with and collaborating closely with large multi-disciplinary teams
Pay Range
- The expected pay range for this position is $150,000-$210,000 for our base US Region 3*. We have three regional pay ranges that are adjusted for cost of living (US1 +15%, US2 +7.5%, US3 Base), learn more about our pay philosophy and cost of living adjustments
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