Product Strategist

Lead Product Experience Strategist

Role Overview

We are seeking a Lead Product Experience Strategist to shape product direction before development begins. This role is responsible for ensuring that product investments solve meaningful business problems, improve operational performance, and deliver measurable outcomes.

Unlike traditional UX, UI Design, or Product Management roles that focus primarily on features or interfaces, this position examines the complete operational ecosystem—including people, processes, technology, data, policies, and workflows—to identify opportunities for transformation and competitive differentiation.

The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker who can uncover hidden inefficiencies, challenge assumptions, and influence critical product decisions early in the lifecycle. They will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, and Business stakeholders to ensure the organization builds the right solutions—not simply more solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Analyze Current-State Operations and Experiences

• Conduct deep analysis of end-to-end business and operational workflows across users, teams, systems, and processes.
• Identify friction points, bottlenecks, manual workarounds, duplicated effort, failure points, compliance risks, and operational inefficiencies.
• Map how work actually happens versus how it is intended to happen.
• Surface opportunities that may not be visible through traditional product discovery or user research methods.

Drive Better Product Decisions Before Development

• Influence product strategy and roadmap decisions before significant engineering investment occurs.
• Challenge assumptions with evidence, workflow analysis, operational data, and business impact assessments.
• Recommend what should be built, redesigned, postponed, simplified, or eliminated.
• Ensure product teams focus on solving high-value business problems rather than optimizing low-impact features.

Define Future-State Experience and Workflow Strategy

• Design future-state operational workflows that improve efficiency, scalability, compliance, and user effectiveness.
• Create experience strategies that connect business objectives with practical execution.
• Establish clear experience principles and workflow models that guide product direction.
• Ensure technology solutions improve how work gets done, not just how screens look.

Quantify Business Value and Outcomes

• Develop business cases supported by measurable impact analysis.
• Quantify opportunities in terms of:
• Time savings
• Cost reduction
• Error reduction
• Risk mitigation
• Productivity gains
• Revenue enablement
• Operational scalability
• Communicate findings and recommendations through clear, executive-level storytelling.

Partner Cross-Functionally

• Collaborate closely with Product Management, Engineering, Operations, Compliance, Customer Experience, and Executive Leadership.
• Facilitate strategic discussions that align stakeholders around business priorities.
• Influence decisions without relying on direct authority.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on experience, workflow, and operational strategy.

Support Strategic Investment Decisions

• Evaluate build-versus-buy opportunities based on workflow impact, operational fit, integration complexity, and long-term business value.
• Assess how proposed solutions affect people, processes, data flows, and organizational performance.
• Recommend approaches that maximize return on investment while minimizing operational risk.

What Success Looks Like

A successful Lead Product Experience Strategist will:

• Improve product decision quality before development begins.
• Prevent unnecessary or low-value development work.
• Identify critical workflow challenges that others overlook.
• Deliver measurable improvements in operational efficiency and business performance.
• Help create differentiated customer and employee experiences through smarter workflow design.
• Drive alignment between business strategy, operational needs, and product investments.
• Establish a reputation as a trusted strategic partner across Product, Engineering, and Business teams.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 7–10 years of experience in one or more of the following areas:
• Product Strategy
• Experience Strategy
• Service Design
• UX Strategy
• Strategic Product Management
• Customer Experience Strategy
• Business Transformation
• Demonstrated experience influencing product direction before development starts.
• Proven success improving operational workflows and business processes through technology-enabled solutions.
• Strong experience working within complex enterprise environments.

Core Competencies

• Operational workflow analysis and service design
• Strategic problem solving
• Business process optimization
• Product strategy and roadmap influence
• Stakeholder management and executive communication
• Business case development and impact modeling
• Facilitation and cross-functional leadership
• Systems thinking and organizational design

Preferred Experience

• Healthcare, health-tech, insurance, financial services, or other highly regulated industries.
• Enterprise software, SaaS platforms, or workflow-intensive operational systems.
• Experience working across multiple business functions and stakeholder groups.

Non-Negotiable Screening Criteria

Candidates must demonstrate examples of:

Influencing Product Decisions Upstream

• Successfully changing, redirecting, postponing, simplifying, or stopping product initiatives before development began.

Identifying High-Impact Opportunities

• Discovering workflow inefficiencies, operational risks, or customer experience issues that were previously overlooked.

Delivering Quantifiable Business Results

• Clearly articulating measurable outcomes such as:
• Hours saved
• Costs reduced
• Errors eliminated
• Risks mitigated
• Productivity increased

Ownership and Accountability

• Taking responsibility for business outcomes and product decisions, not simply providing recommendations or advisory support.

Market-Equivalent Titles

To support sourcing efforts, candidates may come from roles such as:

• Product Experience Strategist
• Lead Product Strategist
• Product Strategy Lead
• Senior Service Designer
• Service Design Lead
• UX Strategist (Senior/Lead)
• Experience Strategy Lead
• Customer Experience (CX) Strategist
• Strategic Product Manager
• Business Transformation Consultant
• Workflow Experience Strategist
• Design Strategy Lead
• Enterprise Experience Strategist