Associate Director, Product Strategy (US)

Code and Theory

$125K — $160K *
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6+ years of experience in product strategy or digital strategy, with a strong track record of leading strategy workstreams with minimal supervision.
  • Demonstrated ability to translate strategic concepts into actionable deliverables, especially regarding user stories and product requirements.
  • Strong facilitation skills for workshops and client engagements, including the ability to hold firm positions amidst pushback.
  • Expertise in synthesizing research and data to develop product strategies that exceed industry standards.
  • Independently proficient with AI tools for various strategic functions, with a growing assessment capacity for their benefits and risks.
  • Emerging insight into AI's role as an organizational capability, especially in the client context.
  • Experience mentoring junior team members and managing specific project workflows independently.

Responsibilities

  • Own discovery workstreams, including competitive analysis and stakeholder interviews, transforming findings into actionable product insights.
  • Develop comprehensive product frameworks and vision documents that align strategic goals with user needs, presenting clear, sequenced directives for teams and clients alike.
  • Create prioritization models to guide client focus, leading alignment sessions confidently to achieve solid decisions even amid conflicting opinions.
  • Express strategic direction in clear, actionable language for delivery teams, refining user stories that include specific strategic intent.
  • Define and implement success metrics for projects, validating recommendations with data-driven insights, and reassessing when necessary.
  • Independently apply AI tools across various strategic processes, focusing on enhancing quality while recognizing human interpretation's vital role.
  • Begin consulting clients on integrating AI into their operations with guidance from senior leadership.

Benefits

  • Professional development opportunities, including mentorship and coaching initiatives.
  • Participation in strategic alignment sessions, improving facilitation and leadership skills.
  • Engagement with advanced AI tools and methodologies, enhancing technological competencies.
  • Collaboration with seasoned senior directors, providing exposure and growth in new business contexts.
  • Access to a dynamic and innovative workplace culture that fosters creativity and strategic thinking.
Full Job Description
The Associate Director, Product is a developing senior practitioner who owns strategy workstreams within larger engagements and is taking on growing client relationship responsibility. This person works confidently across the full range of strategic product work with growing independence and is building the presence and judgment to lead in the room. They are accountable for ensuring that strategy doesn't stop at the recommendation - that the thinking is clear, sequenced, and grounded enough for a team to act on it - and are increasingly the person who bridges that gap in practice. They use AI tools actively and independently across research, synthesis, prototyping, and deliverable creation - with developing judgment about where tools strengthen the work and where they introduce risk. They are also beginning to bring that perspective into client conversations, surfacing where AI can help clients move faster or build more durable internal capability.

WHAT YOU'LL DO
  • Own discovery workstreams within engagements - competitive research, stakeholder interviews, 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 into the work without losing specificity or getting lost in abstraction
  • Contribute to defining success metrics for engagements and use data and research outputs to validate strategic recommendations, and to 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, with a track record of owning strategy workstreams with limited oversight. Experience carrying that work through to delivery decisions or measurable outcomes is strongly preferred
  • 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 that a delivery team can work from them without losing the strategic intent behind them
  • 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

The target range of compensation for this role is $125,000 - $160,000. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and location.

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