JOB SUMMARYThe Principal Content Strategist owns the content strategy that fuels NCL's digital guest journey: Shop, Book, Presail, Onboard, and Next Cruise. This role is responsible for content that directly drives ecom sales performance, personalization of that content at scale for each guest, and structuring content so it can be understood and used by AI assistants and search experiences that guests increasingly rely on to shop, understand, and purchase cruises. This role partners with the Sr. Product Owners who own each journey stage, plus the Principal Experience Designer and the Principal Experimentation Strategist, to ensure content is not just present but performs, personalizes, and is discoverable everywhere guests are looking, including inside AI-driven experiences. As a subject matter expert in content strategy, this role sets and advises on content direction across the organization rather than managing a content production team.
POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES- Own the end-to-end content strategy for NCL's digital guest journey, ensuring content is built first and foremost to convert browsers into bookers and drive measurable ecom sales outcomes at every stage from Shop through Next Cruise.
- Define and govern the personalization strategy for content at scale, ensuring guests receive relevant, individualized content (offers, imagery, itinerary guidance, recommendations) based on behavior, preferences, and journey stage rather than one-size-fits-all messaging.
- Establish content structure, metadata, and data standards that make NCL's digital content consumable and accurate for AI assistants, chatbots, and answer engines, so that AI tools can correctly help guests shop, understand, and purchase NCL cruises.
- Serve as the subject matter expert on content strategy, advising the Sr. Product Owners on how to translate journey-specific business goals into content that supports discovery, conversion, and personalization.
- Partner with the SEO and Technology teams to ensure content architecture, tagging, and delivery systems support both traditional search (SEO) and emerging AI-driven discovery (AEO/GEO).
- Advise the Principal Experimentation Strategist on content testing priorities and interpret testing and performance data to guide content strategy decisions.
- Partner with the Principal Experience Designer to ensure content and design standards work together as one cohesive, brand-anchored guest experience.
- Establish and govern content standards, voice and tone guidelines, and personalization rules that scale consistently across all stages of the guest journey: Shop, Book, Presail, Onboard, and Next Cruise.
- Champion the Digital Guest Promise of personalized, relevant, one-voice experiences in every content decision.
- Provide content strategy expertise and mentorship to content creators and marketers embedded across the Product, Design, Technology, and partner teams, without direct management responsibility for those individuals.
QUALIFICATIONSDEGREE TYPE: Bachelor's Degree
FIELD(S) OF STUDY: Communications, Marketing, Journalism, English, or a related field
EXPERIENCE- 7+ years of experience in content strategy, digital content, or ecom content roles, including at least 3 years operating at a senior or principal level setting content direction across multiple products or teams.
- Demonstrated experience building content strategies that directly drove measurable ecom sales results, not just engagement or brand awareness metrics. Experience designing and scaling content personalization programs, using guest data, behavioral signals, or segmentation to deliver individualized content across web, app, and CRM channels.
- Experience structuring or optimizing content for discoverability across both traditional search engines and AI-driven answer engines and assistants (SEO, AEO, GEO, or similar disciplines).
- Experience working within a large, matrixed organization, collaborating across product, design, marketing, and technology functions to deliver a unified content experience.
- Experience partnering directly with technology teams to implement content management systems, taxonomies, or structured data that support personalization and AI readiness.
- Experience in travel, hospitality, cruise, retail, or another high-consideration, multi-step purchase industry strongly preferred.
- Experience guiding or mentoring other content creators or strategists in a non-supervisory capacity, such as through content reviews, critique, or informal coaching.
COMPETENCIES & SKILLS- Strong portfolio demonstrating content strategy outcomes tied to measurable ecom business results such as conversion, average order value, engagement, or revenue.
- Expert-level knowledge of content strategy, content personalization, and information architecture principles.
- Working knowledge of how AI assistants, large language models, and answer engines retrieve, interpret, and present brand content to consumers, and how to structure content so it is accurately represented in those experiences.
- Proficiency with content management systems, personalization or CDP platforms, and structured data/metadata practices (schema markup and similar).
- Ability to influence and align stakeholders across product, design, technology, and executive teams without formal authority, through data, storytelling, and content rationale.
- Strong analytical skills, including the ability to interpret consumer research, content performance data, and testing results to inform content strategy.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present and defend content direction to senior leadership and cross-functional partners.
- Familiarity with SEO, AEO, and GEO discoverability practices and how they intersect with personalization and AI-driven guest experiences.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity, balancing long-term content strategy with the practical constraints of a phased, multi-year digital transformation program.
- Strong collaboration and coaching orientation, with the ability to guide and elevate the work of content creators and strategists embedded on other teams without direct management authority.
