Senior Digital Strategist Contractor

Velir is an established mid-sized agency with a top-tier portfolio of clients, ranging from the world’s largest non-profits to Fortune 500 brands. As of 2023, Velir acquired Brooklyn Data Company, a premier data and analytics consultancy focused on leadership, process improvement, implementation, and advanced analytics.

At Velir, we believe people are our greatest asset. Our culture is built on a foundation of trust, collaboration, and continued improvement. We strive for excellence in everything we do, embracing challenges as opportunities for growth. Our success is driven by a shared passion for making a positive impact on our customers, our communities and each other. We are a remote first company that offers competitive pay and excellent benefits.

Overview

Velir is seeking an experienced Senior Digital Strategy Consultant to support digital strategy, customer experience, marketing, and commerce engagements. This contract role is ideal for a versatile strategist who combines strong research and analytical skills with practical experience helping organizations improve digital experiences and business performance.

You will work across clients and industries, including associations, nonprofits, and B2B and B2C organizations. Engagements may involve digital strategy and planning, customer and market research, user testing, commerce and path-to-purchase strategy, customer journey optimization, and personalization strategy.

We're looking for someone who can move comfortably between research, strategic analysis, client workshops, and executive-level recommendations. You should be able to quickly understand a client's business, identify meaningful opportunities, develop clear recommendations, and communicate findings in compelling, client-ready deliverables.

You should also bring hands-on experience using advanced AI techniques in strategy work, including synthetic research, AI-assisted benchmarking, and structured synthesis of research and customer insights. We value strategists who use AI to improve research quality and efficiency while critically evaluating results and validating findings against reliable evidence.

You'll collaborate with Velir's Strategy, Experience Design, Data, Technology, and Customer Success teams. Depending on the engagement, you'll independently lead defined strategy workstreams or support a broader team.

Responsibilities

Research, Insights & Analysis

• Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to understand customer needs, market dynamics, competitor positioning, digital trends, and business opportunities.
• Perform competitive benchmarking, digital experience assessments, and industry best-practice research across marketing, content, and commerce experiences.
• Analyze website performance, user behavior, customer journeys, and other available data to identify opportunities and inform recommendations.
• Synthesize research findings into clear insights, strategic implications, and prioritized recommendations.
• Develop research frameworks, interview guides, assessment criteria, and other tools to support structured discovery and analysis.

AI-Enabled Research & Strategic Analysis

• Conduct synthetic research and AI-assisted audience simulations to explore potential needs, behaviors, pain points, and experience scenarios, clearly distinguishing hypotheses from validated customer findings.
• Use AI-assisted benchmarking to systematically assess competitors and leading digital experiences across customer journeys, content, marketing, personalization, and commerce capabilities.
• Apply AI to synthesize interviews, customer feedback, market intelligence, research, and digital performance data to identify patterns and strategic opportunities.
• Create structured prompts, multi-step AI research workflows, and reusable assessment frameworks that improve consistency, speed, and depth of analysis.
• Evaluate AI-generated findings for accuracy, bias, source credibility, and methodological limitations; corroborate material conclusions before incorporating them into client recommendations.

Digital Experience & Business Strategy

• Support the development of digital strategies, experience visions, and actionable roadmaps aligned with client business objectives.
• Assess existing digital experiences and identify improvements to engagement, conversion, and customer journeys.
• Define audience needs, customer personas, journey maps, use cases, and experience requirements.
• Support personalization, audience segmentation, content gating, and digital engagement strategies.
• Partner with UX, design, data, and technology teams to ensure recommendations are practical and inform downstream design and implementation.

Marketing & Commerce Strategy

• Evaluate client marketing effectiveness and identify opportunities to improve customer acquisition, engagement, lead generation, conversion, retention, and content performance.
• Assess client marketing and commerce experiences across B2B and B2C journeys, including discovery, consideration, purchasing or conversion, and ongoing engagement.
• Support commerce and path-to-purchase strategy, experimentation, personalization, and customer experience improvements.
• Connect marketing and commerce recommendations to business outcomes such as revenue growth, lead quality, conversion, and customer retention.
• Apply a working understanding of relevant digital platforms, marketing tools, and analytics to inform strategic recommendations, partnering with technical specialists where needed.

Client Engagement & Strategy Delivery

• Plan and facilitate stakeholder interviews, discovery sessions, and collaborative workshops.
• Develop strategic frameworks, opportunity assessments, recommendations, and roadmaps for client engagements.
• Develop and present polished, executive-ready deliverables that communicate research findings, strategic recommendations, business implications, and actionable next steps.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to connect discovery findings to experience design, platform decisions, and implementation priorities.
• Support account planning, strategic recommendations, and identification of follow-on opportunities when appropriate.
• Manage assigned deliverables, timelines, and stakeholder coordination with limited oversight.

Skills & Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in digital strategy, experience strategy, marketing strategy, commerce strategy, or related consulting roles, preferably within an agency or consultancy.
• Experience supporting both digital marketing and commerce-related challenges, with the ability to adapt strategic approaches to different business models, industries, and client needs.
• Strong research and analytical capabilities, including competitive analysis, market research, customer research, and digital experience assessment.
• Demonstrated experience applying advanced AI-assisted research methods, including synthetic research, competitive benchmarking, research synthesis, or structured multi-step workflows, with the ability to critically evaluate and validate findings.
• Experience translating complex research and business challenges into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Understanding of digital customer experiences, customer journeys, conversion optimization, and personalization.
• Working knowledge of digital marketing, customer acquisition, content strategy, lead generation, analytics, and commerce customer journeys.
• Excellent PowerPoint presentation development, storytelling, and written communication skills.
• Experience facilitating client workshops, conducting stakeholder interviews, and presenting to senior-level audiences.
• Strong organization and project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver high-quality work within established timelines.
• Ability to work independently, adapt quickly to new client environments, and collaborate effectively with multidisciplinary teams.

Physical Requirements

• Frequent sitting at a desk performing work on a computer
• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Compensation Range: $75-$90 hourly compensation for up to 20 hours a week

Please note that compensation packages are finalized after the interview process is concluded. We use a competency-based approach to base pay, which means it is based on the competencies and skills demonstrated for this role.

Core Company Values

• Take the Long View - Ensure the company is built to last
• Be Courageous - Make the right decisions even when they aren't the easiest decisions
• Be Genuine - Bring honesty and authenticity to all that you do
• Work with Focus + Passion - Display purpose and pride in your work and never stop learning

As an equal opportunity employer, we are firmly committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our hiring efforts. We recognize that we need team members from all backgrounds and experiences to successfully shape a positive employee experience as well as deliver our product and service solutions. To that end, we actively seek candidates who can bring diverse experiences and backgrounds to our team. We know that complex factors and systemic bias can get in the way of us meeting strong candidates, so please don't hesitate to apply even if you're not 100% sure.

At this time, Velir does not sponsor candidates and unfortunately cannot accept those on OPT or CPT.