Vice President, Strategy and Design

About the Role

UDig creates digital experiences and frontline tools people want to use. We start with what makes your business different, so what we build gets used, and the growth is easy to measure. We call this Digital Differentiation.

We're hiring the leader of our Strategy and Design practice. You'll set the vision for how UDig helps clients decide what to build and why, and then design experiences people want to use. That spans business and product strategy, experience strategy, research, and design craft.

This leader moves easily between altitudes. You can command the room with client executives, provide oversight across accounts, and then sit down with the team and make the work better.

Location:

Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta, or remote. Regular client travel is expected.

How you'll spend your time

Your time splits roughly evenly across four areas:

Shaping client problems.

Work with client executives to frame the real problem, the strategy, and the case for investing.

Partnering on delivery.

Oversee strategy and design delivery on key accounts, stay in the work with teams, and own the quality of what ships.

Growing your team.

Lead and develop the team: hiring, coaching, staffing, and raising the craft.

Building the practice.

Shape the practice's point of view (POVs, writing, speaking), advance AI-first methods and tools, and own a small set of accounts end to end.

What you'll do

• Shape client problems
• Lead executive conversations that frame the real problem, not just the requested deliverable.
• Set the strategy: where the client should compete, who they're serving, what will make them different, and how we'll measure it.
• Shape product strategy: vision, roadmaps, prioritization, and the business case that ties investment to outcomes.
• Help clients modernize how they build: product operating models, ways of working, and how strategy, product, design, and engineering work together.
• Turn ambiguity into a clear plan clients can fund and teams can execute.
• Partner on delivery
• Provide oversight across a portfolio of accounts. Know how each one is going and where it needs you.
• Stay in the work: run discovery and key working sessions, sharpen strategy and roadmaps, critique and improve designs, and prototype with AI tools when that's the fastest way to an answer.
• Own the quality of strategy and design work across the practice. Step in when an engagement drifts and get it back on track.
• Partner closely with engineering and account leads so strategy, design, and build stay connected, and track whether what ships delivers the value we promised.
• Grow your team
• Lead and develop a large, distributed team of strategists, product leaders, researchers, and designers.
• Hire, coach, and promote. Give direct feedback and model what great looks like at every level.
• Resource engagements effectively with high-performing teams, and monitor utilization and delivery KPIs to stay ahead of demand.
• Set how the team works with AI across research, strategy, concepting, prototyping, and design systems, while holding the bar on original, differentiated work.
• Grow the business
• Craft and evolve the strategy, product, and design offerings we take to market: what we sell, how it's scoped and priced, and the proof behind it.
• Lead or shape pursuits where strategy and design lead: POVs, proposals, estimates, and pitches.
• Turn strong delivery into expansion. Earn the trust that makes a first project a long-term account.
• Build UDig's reputation in strategy and design through case studies, points of view, and relationships in the market.

What you'll bring

• 15+ years across strategy, product, and design
• , with at least 7 years leading teams. A body of work where your strategy shaped what got built, it shipped, and it moved a business number.
• Executive presence.
• You command the room with client C-suites, reframe the question when needed, and are just as comfortable in a working session with a junior strategist or designer.
• Proven client delivery in professional services.
• You have led engagements end to end at a consultancy or agency, overseen multiple accounts, and balanced delivery, utilization, and growth.
• Large, distributed team leadership.
• You have led leaders across locations and built a practice people want to join and stay in.
• In the weeds when it matters.
• You can do the work you ask of others. Expect a working session in the interview, not just a conversation.
• AI-first in practice.
• You have changed how a team works with AI and can show the before and after: speed, quality, and what the client got.
• Range across strategy and design.
• Business and product strategy, roadmapping, business cases, research, experience and service design, UX, UI, and design systems, with strong fluency working alongside engineering.
• Product operating model fluency.
• You have helped organizations move to modern product ways of working and can explain the tradeoffs to an executive.
• Growth track record.
• You have shaped offerings, led pursuits, and grown accounts, and you understand how scope, pricing, and staffing drive practice health.
• Based in Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta, or remote
• , and willing to travel to clients regularly.

What sets you apart

You have shaped and shipped AI-powered or agentic products for clients, not only used AI tools.

You have run a practice through a big change, such as a merger, a new operating model, or an AI shift, and kept the team with you.

You have built reusable offerings or methods that others sold and delivered.

You can prototype in code or with AI build tools well enough to test ideas with real users.

A public point of view on where strategy, product, and design go next.

The good-faith base salary range for this role is listed below, reflecting the amount UDig is willing to pay at the time of this posting. The specific sublevel and salary offered will be determined by the candidate's skills, relevant experience, qualifications, and internal equity.

The range reflects base salary only. This role is also eligible for performance-based incentive compensation, which may include a cash bonus, along with a comprehensive set of health and financial benefits.

UDig does not request or rely on salary history in determining compensation and will not retaliate against any applicant for requesting the salary range or for declining to provide compensation history.

Pay Range

$196,000 — $264,500 USD