About the team and the role:eBay Live is one of eBay's highest-priority bets - a global live commerce platform that is fundamentally changing how buyers discover and connect with sellers across collectibles, fashion, luxury, and beyondWe operate across markets, scale rapidly, and face the kind of strategic questions that will define whether eBay Live becomes a generational commerce platform or misses the window.
This is the definitive strategy role for eBay Live globallyAs Global Strategy Lead, you will own the upstream work that everything else depends on: defining where eBay Live is going and why, articulating the strategic principles that govern how we make decisions, designing how the business measures winning, and owning the consumer and competitive intelligence that keeps our strategy grounded in reality.
This is not an execution role and it is not a planning roleIt is the role that makes the hardest strategic questions answerableYou will be expected to develop a point of view on the most consequential questions facing eBay Live globally - from first principles, not inherited assumptions - and to build the analytical and narrative foundation that senior leadership uses to make better decisions fasterIf you are energized by defining the problem before everyone else knows what it is, this role was built for you.
Reports to: VP, eBay Live Acceleration & Innovation
Location: San Jose, CA (on-site preferred)
What you will accomplish:- North Star: Define eBay Live's long-term global vision - articulate where the business is going and why; build the strategic destination that anchors major investment decisions, product bets, and leadership priorities across markets and time horizons
- Strategic Principles: Develop the operating frameworks and trade-off logic that govern how eBay Live makes decisions globally; codify the strategic beliefs that guide prioritization, say-no discipline, and how the business reasons about growth versus focus
- Goal Architecture: Design how eBay Live measures winning; translate strategic priorities into business outcome frameworks, OKRs, and leading indicators that orient the org around the right metrics - and distinguish between what matters and what is merely measurable
- Consumer Intelligence: Own the deep understanding of eBay Live's buyers and sellers globally; commission and synthesize qualitative and quantitative research, behavioral data, and market trends into strategic implications that sharpen priorities and challenge assumptions
- Competitive Intelligence: Own the global competitive narrative for eBay Live; track competitor moves, live commerce market dynamics, and platform-level shifts across regions; develop the strategic so-what that keeps leadership ahead of the market rather than reacting to it
- Strategic Priorities: Identify eBay Live's most consequential global opportunities and risks; structure ambiguous, high-stakes problems into clear strategic choices; develop well-reasoned recommendations that shape what eBay Live bets on and bring executive leadership to a common view on the path forward
What you will bring:- Strategy: 8+ years in strategy roles crafting clear frameworks, defining long-range direction, and connecting the dots for senior leaders - with a track record that goes beyond executing strategy to building it; experience at a top-tier management consulting firm or investment bank is strongly preferred
- Framework Development: You have built strategic frameworks from scratch - north stars, strategic principles, goal architectures - not just worked within ones that existed; you can take a blank page and produce a defensible, well-structured point of view that moves decision-makers
- Consumer & Market Research: 8+ years of defining and conducting deep quantitative and qualitative research; you know how to commission and synthesize consumer insight at scale, and how to translate complex data into clear strategic implications for executive audiences
- Competitive Intelligence: You have owned competitive landscapes at depth - tracking market dynamics, monitoring competitor moves, and building the analytical picture that connects what is happening in the market to what the business should do about it
- Marketplace or Consumer Technology Fluency: 5+ years operating within consumer retail, marketplace, or live commerce environments; you understand the key industry dynamics, growth drivers, and platform-level forces, and you apply that fluency to sharpen strategic recommendations rather than just describe the landscape
- Stakeholder Influence: Proven ability to align senior leaders behind a strategic direction without a reporting line; you drive conviction through analytical rigor and narrative clarity, not authority
- Communication: Mastery of influencing others through clear and compelling written and verbal communication; you write with precision and persuasion, and you can move a room of executives with a well-structured point of view
- Driven: Operates with urgency, an intrinsic focus on making impact, and a sense of extreme ownership - especially in ambiguous situations where the right path forward is not yet defined
Additional DetailsThis job posting relates to an existing vacancy within eBay.
