Sr. Director, Strategy

About the role

We drive intelligent growth for ambitious businesses and leading brands. Customer understanding is more potent and drives greater value when insights go to work directly within marketing and experience priorities. To give our clients that advantage, we put an insights-driven operating system at the core of our design, go-to-market and digital experience solutions. Material clients make smarter growth choices because they can see clearly how and when to take the shots that count. Together, we connect consumer intelligence with customer demand generation to build lasting, profitable relationships. Aruliden is a world-class global design agency that helps brands grow through strategy, product design, and purposeful innovation. With award-winning work spanning physical products, digital experiences, brand systems, and go-to-market creative - for clients including Google, Bulgari, Marc Jacobs, and Verizon - Aruliden has built a reputation for work that is as strategically rigorous as it is creatively bold. A recipient of numerous Red Dot awards and recognized across the industry's most competitive design honors, as part of Material, Aruliden operates at the intersection of industrial design, brand design, digital experience, and the creative strategies that bring it all to market. In 2021, Aruliden joined Material, a leading human insights and strategy company, expanding its platform while retaining its identity as a notable and distinctive design agency. Material is seeking a Senior Director of Strategy to lead and shape the strategy function within its Design Service Line which goes to market under the brand Aruliden but also derives opportunity and engagement from its parent company. This is a senior, client-facing role at the intersection of design, brand, culture, and commerce - built for a strategist who believes the best ideas are born when rigorous inquiry meets creative ambition. The VP of Strategy will serve as the strategic backbone of a multidisciplinary design practice spanning industrial design, digital experience and product design, brand design, and creative services. Working alongside designers, researchers, and creative directors, this leader will set the strategic direction for client engagements, build and mentor a small team of embedded strategists, and help grow the practice through exceptional thinking and trusted client relationships. This role is modeled on the tradition of strategists who operate as genuine creative partners - fluent in brand, culture, human behavior, and design systems. The VP of Strategy will bring the kind of intellectual curiosity and integrative thinking that makes strategy generative, not just directional. As an affiliate of Material's Growth Strategy service line, this leader will also participate in a broader community of practice, contributing to shared standards, new offerings, and cross-company knowledge exchange.