Job Description
About us
At Shaped By, we believe there’s an unbreakable connection between creativity and tangible business results. We exist to help B2B-focused businesses uncover their authentic truth and become the boldest versions of themselves. As an agency, we put our people first – fostering a culture of respect, flexibility, and collaboration – while focusing on product before profit to ensure every creative output meets the highest standard.
Our vision is simple yet ambitious:
“To be the global champions for creative thinking and design excellence in the B2B world.” We’re a tight-knit team that loves to push creative boundaries in a niche but sizeable core target market: high-growth technology brands that are shaping the future of business. We do this while also championing the well-being of our people through friendly working hours, robust benefits, and genuine opportunities for professional growth.
Context
Strategy is a growing part of how we work with clients, and we’re building the team around it. We’re adding a Senior Strategist to lead focused engagements of their own and to be a core part of the strategy team on our largest accounts. It’s a chance to help shape how the strategy practice works as it grows.
Required skills
The role
As Senior Strategist you will lead brand strategy for growth-stage B2B tech companies, from Series A to pre-IPO, most of them US-headquartered and in categories where trust is hard to earn.
You’ll lead focused engagements yourself, from the first diagnostic conversation through to the creative. On our largest accounts you’ll work alongside the Strategy Director, shaping the strategy from research to recommendation.
The core of the job is brand: positioning, brand architecture, brand platforms and messaging for companies that are usually building their foundations for the first time. Strategy here ends in identity, not a deck, so you’ll work closely with our Creative Directors and design team. Reporting to the Strategy Director.
What’s expected from you
Leading brand strategy
- You lead focused, single-scope engagements end to end, from the first diagnostic conversation through to the creative.
On our largest programmes you work alongside the Strategy Director, owning the research and helping shape the strategy from the ground up.
You build positioning, brand architecture, brand platforms and messaging that a creative team can pick up and run with.
You fit the strategy to the stage of the business: what a scaling company can credibly claim now and what it still has to earn, and what an established one should keep, change or let go.
Research and insight
- You plan and run discovery: stakeholder, customer and expert interviews, workshops and desk research.
You come into the first workshop with a view already formed from category and demand data, and you use discovery to test it.
You turn research into a few findings that change the recommendation, and you’re happy to cut the rest.
Into the creative
- You write the brief that sets the creative going, and you stay close through concept development so the strategy carries through the work, including into campaigns when a brand engagement leads there.
You work hand in hand with the Creative Director: Visual & Design and the Creative Director: Concept & Verbal, so strategy, design and verbal land as one piece of work.
Clients
- You present strategy directly to founders, CMOs and heads of brand. You read the room, and you hold the strongest recommendation when it gets pushed on.
You spot when a brief is aimed at the wrong problem, and you can make that case to a sceptical senior audience.
You help set objectives and success measures at the start, so the work can be judged against something.
The agency
- You work with Client Services so strategy is scoped, resourced and delivered on brief, on time and on budget.
You contribute to proposals, scoping and pitches, and you notice where an existing account could grow.
You help build the strategy practice: its methods, its tools and how we use AI.
Capabilities
- Five or more years in strategy, most of it in brand consultancy or a brand and design studio.
A portfolio of positioning, brand architecture and brand platform work you led, not just contributed to.
Strong design literacy. You can brief a design team, judge whether an identity route expresses the strategy, and explain why in terms designers respect.
You write clearly and with conviction. A positioning statement, a brand platform and a creative brief are all writing jobs, and you’re good at all three.
You can run a room with senior clients, hold a point of view under pushback, and change your mind when the evidence says so.
You’re comfortable with data. You can read category and search data, customer reviews and research findings, and you know the difference between a claim with evidence behind it and a judgement call.
You already use AI in your work to go faster and think better, and you can talk about where it helps and where it doesn’t, in line with our people-first values and AI manifesto.
You can run several projects at once and keep each one moving on your own.
Ideally, you’ll also have:
- Experience with B2B technology brands selling to technical or enterprise buyers, where products are complex and buying groups are large.
Campaign strategy experience, especially campaigns built on a brand platform you helped create.
A working knowledge of marketing effectiveness evidence, and where it doesn’t hold for early-stage companies.
If you have the essentials but not all of these, apply anyway.
Benefits
What’s in it for you:
- 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and Christmas shutdown.
- Competitive salary with annual reviews.
- Company sick pay up to 5 days per year, otherwise statutory sick pay.
- Life assurance at 4x salary.
- Health cash plan (taxable benefit).
- Professional development budget of £500 per annum.
- Participation in the company reward scheme, subject to annual profitability targets.
- Tech scheme and cycle to work scheme (salary sacrifice).
The finer details:
- This is hybrid role only – operating 2 days flexible working and 3 days studio time at Paintworks Bristol
- Working hours Monday to Friday 9.00am to 5.30pm, with one hour available for lunch each day. 37 ½ hours per week
Diversity, inclusion & belonging
At Shaped By, everyone is welcome and has the opportunity to get on. Fostering a diverse and inclusive culture is at the core of how we do business. It’s embedded in our core principles: People first and product before profit.
As part of these principles, we’re committed to supporting inclusion and diversity. Everyone is welcome and supported in their development at all stages in their journey with us.