Principal Product Strategist

Who We Are

 

WillowTree, a TELUS Digital Company, partners with the world’s leading brands to help them tackle their thorniest challenges - be it launching new digital products, delivering personalized marketing at scale, or harnessing the power of data and AI to transform their business. These mission-critical initiatives aren’t solved by a single discipline. Great digital is a team game - it requires seamlessly combining strategy, engineering, design, data science, marketing, and more. Other firms have bolted on these capabilities - as digital natives, we’ve built them into our teams from Day 1. The result? Top and bottom lines that grow, alongside our client’s capabilities. Check out how we have impacted our clients' digital portfolios over the years.

In January 2023, WillowTree was acquired by TELUS Digital (Symbol: TIXT).  The combined company brings an unparalleled ability to deliver seamless, trusted, digitally-enabled experiences across any channel a customer might choose - be it mobile apps, websites, voice skills, chatbots, email, service agents, or associates.

Location and Flexibility

To help retain our deep culture of collaboration both among ourselves and our stakeholders, this role will maintain an in-office presence in a hybrid capacity (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays) at either our Boston, MA, Charlottesville, VA, Columbus, OH, or Durham, NC office.

Travel to client sites (10%) will be required on an ad hoc basis.

The Opportunity

As a Principal Product Strategist, you’ll play a leading role at the intersection of Business Strategy, Technology, and User Experience in guiding the creation and evolution of the world’s best digital products and experiences. Our Strategists have the autonomy to create beautiful, useful digital products across platforms: native apps, responsive sites, bots, voice assistants, and more, for many well-known brands. They operate at both the individual product level, and across a client’s digital portfolio / suite of offerings.

Great product sits at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability, and our best-in-class teams bridge each of these, through the seamless collaboration between strategy, research, design, and engineering. With an emphasis on viability and desirability (and capable of speaking to the latest in CX-enabling tech), our Strategy practice identifies competitive whitespace, facilitates client workshops to draw out business goals and strategic priorities, participates in user research, drives ideation designed to achieve business goals and meet user needs, and articulates business value to make recommendations for the direction of a product or experience. Our Product Strategists serve as trusted advisors to senior clients, with the aim of developing lasting relationships.

Responsibilities

• Tell compelling and inspiring stories through artfully crafted presentations outlining the research, vision, and specific recommendations balanced with technical reality
• Identify and articulate business goals, market goals, and user goals
• Create clarity out of ambiguous problem spaces; quick to focus the team’s effort in the most valuable direction
• Consult on user acquisition and marketing strategies for new products
• Gather and analyze large amounts of information expeditiously while developing compelling, insightful recommendations and product vision
• Communicate product decisions to senior-level stakeholders
• Lead ideation exercises and driving creative problem solving
• Work closely with designers, researchers, and project managers to set the direction for products and/or portfolios and platforms
• Work with WillowTree leadership to identify whitespace in our strategy service offering
• Contribute to commercial activity, such as providing strategic input into client pitch-work and RFP responses

Qualifications/Skills

• Experience working in an agency or consultancy with exposure to digital product/software strategy engagements
• An understanding of user-centered research principles and how to apply those user insights
• Have successfully launched products from previous roles
• Led client engagements and are empathetic to client needs
• Managed project workshops, check-ins, timelines, and presentations
• Significant mobile and emerging technology industry knowledge
• Can successfully tell stories with inspiring presentations; understands how to structure a narrative for maximum impact
• Strong public speaker capable of ‘owning the room’ from leading presentations to facilitating healthy group discussion

Bonus Points:

• Exposure to ‘beyond the product’ management consulting
• Ability to articulate and quantity the business impact of our ideas
• Pricing and distribution
• Marketing strategy and customer segmentation
• Scenario planning
• Innovation incubator design
• Design thinking process consulting
• Digital transformation roadmapping
• Masters in Business Administration
• Adept at building long-term relationships with client stakeholders
• Expert Keynote skills

Why WillowTree?

We offer a place to be yourself.

Our differences, both visible and invisible, benefit our teams, our communities, and the products we craft. That’s why WillowTree strives to build a team with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. You’ll work hard here; however, we’ll balance that with a culture that supports your growth and cares about your well-being. We’re committed to creating an environment of inclusion — a place where every Tree can thrive.

We want you to reach your fullest potential and part of your professional development at WillowTree will include dedicated time to innovate on passion projects and an annual stipend to fund your professional pursuits.

WillowTree upholds our core values in every aspect of our work. We promote safe and inclusive work environments and maintain a drug-free workplace. We celebrate our differences and provide equal employment opportunities to all team members and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Diverse teams build better products. We acknowledge that the tech industry especially lacks opportunity for those who are of non-traditional backgrounds and in underrepresented groups. In order to create the best products for everyone, we know that it's important for our team to reflect the diversity of our users, and we are committed to being the change we want to see.