The Industry Strategist - Principal is a former industry leader that serves as trusted advisors to customers and internal teams, helping CDW anticipate industry needs and deliver differentiated value.
Industry strategists are customer-facing experts who help build and maintain relationships with customers and their leaders and help shape CDW’s strategic direction and solutions within a specific industry segment. This role blends deep industry knowledge with technology insight to strengthen customer relationships, drive growth and influence solution development.
What You Will Do
Customer Relationship Engagement & Advisory
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with customer executives, program leaders, operational stakeholders, and technical teams.
• Lead strategic discussions that shape customers’ long-term vision, technology posture, and organizational maturity.
• Design, present and demonstrate industry aligned strategies, solutions, architectures, and partner technologies.
• Participate in onsite meetings, executive briefings, business reviews, and advisory sessions to guide customer decision making.
• Influence customer requirements by collaborating across stakeholder groups and helping define solution direction.
• Mentor associate and staff level industry strategists in their responsibilities.
Sales & Enablement Support
• Serve as subject matter expert during customer presentations, sales cycles, solution briefings, and large opportunity pursuits.
• Articulate CDW’s value proposition clearly to customers, partners, and sellers.
• Build the strategy for training and mentoring CDW sellers on industry trends, competitive insights, solution messaging, and customer engagement strategies.
• Support sellers in navigating complex procurement environments and identifying additional opportunities.
• Participate in customer webinars, conference calls, and internal enablement activities to drive team readiness.
• Shape customer’s board level vision into strategic sales opportunities.
Industry Solution Development
• Lead the process to translate industry problems into scalable, repeatable solution offerings aligned with CDW’s portfolio.
• Partner with engineering, services, product, and logistics teams to design complete solution packages.
• Coordinate many technology partners participation, ensuring solutions integrate capabilities that address real industry use cases.
• Assist with qualifying and scoping solution opportunities within target accounts.
• Support the development of new offerings that incorporate emerging technologies, regulatory needs, and customer demand patterns.
Industry Thought Leadership & Strategic Insight
• Serve as a recognized industry thought leader within CDW’s strategist organization, guiding how technology can positively impact the segment. Mentor other industry strategists in these efforts.
• Monitor emerging trends, regulatory shifts, competitive movements, and technology innovations relevant to the industry.
• Evaluate and build the strategy to bring to market new technology approaches to understand their value, the problems they solve, their market potential, and alignment with CDW’s strategic roadmap.
• Lead the identification of target markets and high-value account segments where CDW can expand its influence.
• Represent CDW at conferences, industry events, briefings, and professional forums to strengthen brand presence and credibility.
Industry Briefings Support (as assigned)
• Strategist participants represent relevant industry expertise with capacity/availability to actively participate in all sessions and events of the briefing and participates in one or more agenda sessions.
• Builds and facilitates one or more sessions/panels.
• Acts as an Ambassador to customer attendees.
• Supports the role of the Strategist Lead as required.
• Strategist Lead represents relevant industry expertise with capacity/availability.
• Drive agenda design and thematic development.
• Drive attendee recruitment.
• Drive partner recruitment.
• Drive session content development.
• Coordinate session deliverables (e.g., panel materials, meeting participation); enforces partner compliance with event guidelines, etc.
• Informs Briefing Committee of status, issues requiring mitigation, etc.
What We Expect of You
• Bachelor’s degree or 15+ years of experience working in the specific industry or equivalent experience
• Excellent customer-facing skills with experience building trusted executive-level relationships.
• Understanding and influence on technology trends and solution architecture within the industry.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide technology implementations including integration, configuration, troubleshooting, training, and adoption.
• Excellent leadership, facilitation, strategic planning, and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent communication, presentation, negotiation, and collaboration skills.
• Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and manage multiple priorities.
• Experience navigating procurement processes and uncovering new opportunities.
• Ability to travel as needed.
• Experience as an IT C-Level, or IT Vice President, is a plus.
• 5+ years experience as a consultant, is a plus.
• Experience leading IT strategy and operations in a regulated, complex ecosystem, is a plus.
• 15 or more years’ experience in assessing business drivers and translating them into qualifiable, quantifiable and tactical solutions, is a plus.
• Understanding technologies and the challenges of implementing new technologies into a highly regulated and complex technology ecosystem, is a plus.
• Industry-relevant or technology-specific certifications, is a plus.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of standard industry regulations i.e. FERPA, HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA, is a plus.
Pay range: $157,500 - $182,000 depending on experience and skill set
Annual bonus target of 43% subject to terms and conditions of plan
Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/
Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials
CDW is committed to being an AI-fluent organization
We’re looking for people who bring curiosity, a learner’s mindset, and a willingness to engage with ever-evolving technology and tools. We value adopting AI as a partner, openness to experimentation, and a shared interest in learning together on AI. Our goal is to create a culture where AI enhances—not replaces—human creativity and decision-making. You don’t need to be an expert today; what matters is your readiness to explore, adapt, and grow with us as we integrate AI responsibly and effectively into our work.
Additionally, CDW is committed to fostering an equitable, transparent, and respectful hiring process for all applicants. During our application process, our goal is to understand your experience, strengths, skills, and qualifications. As an AI forward company, we see AI not just as a tool, but as a catalyst for new ways of thinking, creating, and communicating. We encourage candidates to embrace an AI mindset, one that’s curious, adaptive, and ready to explore what’s possible. We welcome thoughtful use of AI to expand your perspective and elevate how you share your story, while ensuring your application remains rooted in your own background, judgment, and voice.
