Strategist

About the Job

Strategists who love the doing as much as the thinking—this one’s for you.

The Strategist is the engine of a Merit engagement. You’re curious, empathetic, and you turn that into action: designing research, running interviews, reading reports, analyzing data, measuring success, and surfacing the insight that changes the conversation.

You’ll report to our Operations & Strategy Lead, who shapes the work, and partner closely with our principal and creative leadership on the thinking itself.

We’re opening this role as a 90-day contract engagement, with the intent to convert to a full-time salaried position if we both feel it’s the right fit.

Sound like a situation you’d thrive in? Let’s talk.

What You’ll Do

• Lead Small Engagements End to End — Own scoping, research design, analysis, deliverables, and the client presentation on smaller projects, with support from our Strategy team.

• Carry Real Weight on Large Ones — Take ownership of workstreams inside our biggest engagements, running the research, building the frameworks, and keeping the work on track.

• Design and Run the Research — Develop the learning plans, screen participants, write the guides and questionnaires, moderate the interviews and focus groups, field the surveys, and comb the secondary landscape — as fluent with a cross-tab and the limits of the data as you are in a focus group. You do the fieldwork, not just the readout.

• Turn Data into Audience Insight — Code, synthesize, and pressure-test a mountain of mixed-source data until it distills to the handful of things that matter — the kind of insight that reframes how a client sees the people they serve.

• Build the Deliverables — Write the decks, briefs, personas, journey maps, messaging frameworks, and strategy documents that carry our thinking into the world — clear, well-argued, and tuned to the stakeholder in the room.

• Hold the Client Relationship — Run the standing check-ins, chase the missing inputs, and be the person the client looks to. Take the hard question without flinching, push back respectfully when the thinking needs it, and escalate challenges early.

• Steward Scope, Budget, and Timeline — Keep timelines, budgets, and scope visible. Track hours against budget, and raise the flag early when help is needed.

• Brief and Partner with Creative — Write the briefs that translate insight and design principles into creative direction for our designers and writers, and stay engaged through execution so the strategy shows up in the work.

• Facilitate Working Sessions — Prepare and co-lead client workshops and internal downloads, building toward leading them solo.

• Keep a Pulse on the Landscape — Track cultural, behavioral, and sector trends across education, public health, climate, and civic life, and translate them into openings for our clients.

What You Bring

• 3+ years in brand strategy, research, insights, or communications strategy. Agency or consultancy background strongly preferred.

• Comfort in a lean team. You own the details of your own work, from formatting to scheduling and everything in between.

• The ability to ramp. You learn a client’s world fast, ask for what you need, and produce something real inside the first month — without missing a beat when priorities shift.

• Grounded and purpose-driven. Our clients work on education, public health, climate resilience, and civic trust. You want to spend your working life near that — and you care how the work lands.

• Curious and human-centered. You ask the right questions, dig into the answers, and never lose sight of the people behind the data — they stay in the room when you build the strategy.

• Owner of the details. You catch the typo, the broken logic, and the number that doesn’t tie — and in a lean team, you run your own work end to end, from formatting to scheduling.

• Storyteller at heart. You know how to make strategy compelling for the people who have to act on it.

• Honest about what you don’t know. You’d rather say “I’m not sure yet” than perform certainty.

• Proactive and self-directed. You see what needs doing and start before you’re asked. 

• Independent and self-motivated. You do your best work remotely, without someone checking in hour to hour.

How the First 90 Days Work

We hire through a 90-day contract so both sides can find out whether this is a fit. Here’s what that means in practice.

• Real work from week one. You’re on live client engagements from the start 

• A guide in your corner. A manager and mentor to show you the ropes and help you grow. 

• Check-ins at 30, 60, and 90 days. Intentional communication about how things are going and how we can work better together

The Details

• Structure: 90-day contract engagement, with intent to convert to full-time

• Location: NYC or Austin preferred. Fully remote considered for the right person.

• Reports to: Operations & Strategy Lead

• Hours: Full-time equivalent (approximately 40 hours/week) during the contract period

• Travel: Limited (max 10%) for occasional client workshops and team gatherings

• Benefits: Available upon conversion to full-time. Details provided during the process.

If this sounds like you, send your resume and a short note (five sentences max) on why you’re the right fit to careers@meritstrategy.com with the subject line: Strategist — Your Name.