Strategic Planning Manager

Lead, Strategy Manager – Product, Design, Merchandising

As a Lead Strategy Manager, you will support strategic planning and execution across product, design, and merchandising functions for a major consumer business initiative. You will partner cross-functionally with business leaders to drive integrated strategic plans grounded in market and consumer insights, enabling growth and competitive advantage. This role requires strong strategic experience, analytical rigor, excellent communication skills, and the ability to influence multi-functional teams in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment.

How You Will Contribute

• Lead project-based strategic analysis and partner with business leaders to define and recommend growth strategies.
• Build and catalyze integrated strategic plans across product, design, merchandising, marketing, and marketplace by driving cross-functional actions.
• Assess strategy impact by developing KPIs, diagnosing results, and prioritizing future actions.
• Rapidly build trust with stakeholders, gaining traction through early wins while advancing longer-lead, high-impact initiatives.
• Communicate insights and recommendations with high impact through data-informed, hypothesis-driven presentations.
• Support cohesion and a positive team environment with a collaborative, team-first mindset.
• Translate deep consumer understanding and competitive landscape insights into actionable strategy.

Qualifications

• MBA or equivalent graduate degree with a minimum of 5 years of directly relevant experience OR one of the accepted alternative education/experience combinations (PhD/Law 3 yrs; Bachelor’s 7 yrs; Associates 8 yrs).
• Background in strategy, including management consulting, corporate strategy, or investment banking.
• Experience in apparel/footwear, retail, merchandising, digital/ecommerce, or other consumer-facing industries with strong competitive marketplace understanding.
• Strategic mindset with strong analytical, problem-solving, and project leadership skills.
• Exceptional presentation, verbal, and written communication skills (Keynote/PowerPoint expertise preferred).
• Ability to influence others including senior leadership.
• Flexible and collaborative engagement style with diverse teams and perspectives.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and deliver pragmatic, results-oriented solutions.

About BrickRed Systems:

BrickRed Systems is a global leader in next-generation technology, consulting, and business process service companies. We enable clients to navigate their digital transformation. BrickRed Systems delivers a range of consulting services to our clients across multiple industries around the world. Our practices employ highly skilled and experienced individuals with a client-centric passion for innovation and delivery excellence.

With ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certification and over a decade of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we harness the power of cognitive computing hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics, and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.