Founding Growth Strategist

Role Description

You are the first growth strategist at this company. The job has three phases, and you'll move through them at your own pace:

• DEFINE: Build the strategy function from scratch. No growth audit framework, no test prioritization methodology, no CRO playbook, no opportunity-sizing model currently exists. You build them.
• EXECUTE: Run growth strategy personally for our Tier 1 accounts while you build. Audits, roadmaps, experiment plans, post-launch analyses. Your name is on every one.
• SCALE: Once the methodology works, hire strategists under you and roll the service out to the full book.

You'll partner closely with our Founding Account Manager. They own the client relationship, the cadence, and the commercial conversations. You own the strategic substance: what the client should do next, why, and what it's worth. Together, you and the AM are how the company scales what the founders have always done: own the strategic agenda and own the client relationship.

Qualifications

• 6–9 years in growth strategy, CRO, or performance consulting at a digital agency or in-house at a DTC brand.
• You've personally owned the growth roadmap for at least one DTC brand doing $20M+ in annual GMV (our Tier 1 book is $10M–$100M brands).
• Shopify fluent. Not as an admin, but as a strategist. You know which apps move the needle vs. which are bloat, how the checkout, PDP, and cart actually behave, and what the partner ecosystem (Klaviyo, Recharge, Yotpo, Gorgias, Northbeam, Triple Whale, etc.) can and cannot do.
• Data native. Comfortable with the modern CRO stack: GA4, Polar Analytics (our preferred), Triple Whale, Hotjar / Fullstory / Clarity for heat mapping and session replay, and the experimentation tools we use most (Intelligems, Shoplift, Visually, Convert, VWO). You pull your own data and build your own reporting in Looker Studio or similar. You don't wait on an analyst.
• Strong opinions held lightly. You have a methodology, you can defend it, and you update it when the evidence changes.
• You can tell a story with numbers. A founder or VP of E-Comm reads your deck and acts on it. No 40-slide audits that nobody opens.
• Builder mentality. The absence of structure is the part you find interesting, not the part you complain about.
• US or Canada-based, with meaningful EST overlap. Willing to travel periodically for client on-sites, conferences (ShopTalk, etc.), and team gatherings.

Requirements

• Growth roadmap in place for every Tier 1 account, tied to that client's actual business goals (revenue, AOV, CR, LTV), not vanity metrics.
• A test prioritization framework (PIE, ICE, your own, your call) live and used to govern every experiment we propose.
• A repeatable growth audit that we can run on any new retainer client in the first 30 days.
• At least $500K in expansion revenue from work you scoped. The wrapper is your call: CRO sprints, growth councils, advisory engagements.
• A hiring plan for Strategist #2 in your back pocket, ready to execute when the methodology is ready.

What You'll Own

• The growth roadmap for every Tier 1 account: hypotheses, prioritized backlog, sequencing, expected impact.
• Experiment design and governance: what we test, how we measure it, when we call it.
• The growth audit: the framework, the cadence, the deliverable.
• Post-launch analyses: did the work move the metric, and what do we do next.
• The strategic narrative inside QBRs (the AM runs the meeting; you bring the substance).
• Translation: client business goals into clear briefs for design, dev, and PM.
• The strategy playbook itself: docs, templates, frameworks, hiring rubric.
• Expansion sizing: when there's a $200K opportunity in front of us, you articulate why and back it up with numbers.

Bonus Points

• Prior experience as the first strategist hire somewhere (you've done this exact arc before).
• You've hired and managed strategists or analysts, even informally.
• Background at a CRO-pure-play (Conversion, Speero, Widerfunnel) or performance-led agency.
• You've owned the experimentation function end-to-end: hypothesis, design, build, analyze, write up.
• Comfortable presenting to founders and CFOs, not just e-comm directors.
• Plugged into the CRO community (you follow folks like Anthony Morgan, Oliver Crayon, the Hess couple at Drip, etc.). You know what good practice looks like in 2026, not just 2020.

What This Is Not

• Not an A/B testing executor role. You set the strategic agenda. The dev team builds the experiments based on your prioritization. If you want to spend your day clicking around in VWO, this isn't right.
• Not a marketing or paid-media role. We do not run ads. Your focus is on-site, retention, lifecycle, and the strategic shape of the engagement, not top-of funnel acquisition.
• Not a VP role with a team on day one. You're hire #1 in this function. The team comes after the methodology works.
• Not a strategist who needs the AM to defend their recommendations. You can be in the room with the client, own the room, and be the one whose advice they listen to.