Forward Deployed Strategist

phData

21h • Remote

About The Position

phData is seeking a Forward Deployed Strategist to join its Advisory team. This business-first consultant helps clients rapidly identify, shape, and accelerate high-value AI and data opportunities. Working at the intersection of consulting, product thinking, value mapping, and technology, the strategist partners directly with business stakeholders to uncover impactful use cases, express them in business terms, and turn them into actionable MVPs that deliver measurable value.

The strategist is the primary business-facing lead on a small, nimble activation-style team. The role involves quickly understanding client challenges, building trust with executives, managers, and frontline operators, connecting technical possibilities to business priorities, and helping clients move from scattered ideas to AI-enabled workflows, prototypes, and decisions. The position works alongside client and phData teams, including in person as needed, to drive business outcomes.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of consulting experience with a passion for technology-driven process optimization.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including executive storytelling, workshop leadership, active listening, and business-case development.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust with business executives, functional leaders, and end users in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Strong consulting presence and ability to facilitate productive conversations, constructively challenge assumptions, and guide clients toward practical decisions.
• Experience translating ambiguous business problems into structured problem statements, use cases, hypotheses, and MVP scopes.
• Ability to connect solution ideas to measurable business value using KPIs, ROI logic, adoption metrics, cycle-time improvements, risk reduction, and time-to-value framing.
• Experience partnering with technical teams to move from business requirements to prototypes, pilots, and scalable solutions.
• Comfort working hands-on with AI copilots, analytics tools, workflow tools, and low/no-code platforms to accelerate discovery, prototyping, and validation.
• Deep empathy for users and willingness to understand how work is actually done, including exceptions, workarounds, and organizational friction.
• High ownership, sound judgment, and comfort making progress without perfect requirements.
• Bachelor’s degree in business, analytics, engineering, information systems, design, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in business administration (MBA).
• Exposure to modern data and AI platforms, self-service analytics, workflow automation, or low/no-code tooling.
• Experience building business cases for new technology investments and influencing executive stakeholders.
• Experience working alongside engineers, solution architects, or delivery teams in client-service environments.
• Familiarity with change management, adoption planning, or operating-model design.

Responsibilities

• Understand client challenges, constraints, stakeholder dynamics, and workflow realities.
• Immerse in business operations to identify high-value opportunities, including manual and cross-functional workflows that may be addressed with AI.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into clear problem statements, use cases, hypotheses, and MVP scopes that can be validated quickly.
• Lead workshops, interviews, working sessions, and art-of-the-possible conversations to build alignment and establish a practical path forward.
• Apply a user-centered design mindset to solution identification.
• Define success using business KPIs and quantify measurable value to support investment in MVPs and solutions.
• Maintain a clear connection between use cases, expected outcomes, and the client’s broader technology roadmap.
• Build relationships with business executives, functional leaders, and end users through clear communication, active listening, and productive facilitation.
• Develop balanced technical, organizational, and process recommendations, along with compelling narratives and business cases for AI and data investments.
• Translate between business and technical teams, helping stakeholders understand trade-offs, risks, dependencies, timelines, and the path from MVP to scale.
• Prototype and iterate solutions using low/no-code and AI-assisted tools to demonstrate value early.
• Work with phData technologists to develop solutions quickly and communicate their business value to stakeholders.
• Identify platform, data, workflow, and operating-model gaps that need to be addressed to scale successful patterns beyond MVP.
• Help clients rethink how work gets done through adoption-minded solution design and change communication.
• Lead the work from a consulting-forward, business-facing perspective, managing scope and risk while maintaining executive-level stakeholder relationships.
• Align stakeholders around priorities, next steps, and decision points so discovery, prototyping, and scaling remain focused on measurable outcomes.
• Partner with client and phData teams to move validated ideas toward scalable delivery and broader organizational impact.
• Work alongside clients, in person as needed, to drive business outcomes.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level