Senior Content Strategist - Contract

Codal • Chicago, IL

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Codal is seeking a hands-on Senior Content Strategist to lead the content dimension of client engagements from discovery onwards. This role involves embedding with project teams during critical early phases to understand how content works across client organizations and translating that into models, taxonomies, and governance. The Senior Content Strategist will run workshops, interview stakeholders, audit content estates, and produce concrete deliverables for project teams. This is a practitioner role focused on bringing content thinking earlier into the process to shape architecture, design, and delivery.

Requirements

• 5+ years hands-on content strategy experience, with at least 3 in client-facing agency or consultancy engagements.
• Demonstrable track record shipping content models (types, fields, relationships, taxonomies) into production CMS implementations.
• Production experience with at least one headless or composable CMS (Sanity, Contentful, Contentstack, or equivalent).
• Experience running discovery workshops and stakeholder interviews with senior client stakeholders (Director level and above).
• Ability to translate business requirements into technical content specifications that engineering teams can implement against.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English.
• Comfort operating autonomously in a distributed team across multiple time zones.
• Portfolio or case studies evidencing content audits, content models, or governance frameworks.

Nice To Haves

• You think in structure: content types, relationships, taxonomies, reuse patterns, and you can translate that thinking into artefacts others can use and implement.
• You are comfortable in front of clients: running workshops, interviewing senior stakeholders, navigating political dynamics, and making people feel heard.
• You are pragmatic. You know when to go deep and when "good enough and shipped" is the right call.
• You are comfortable working autonomously within a distributed team, and you know when to escalate.
• You are energised by operating at the seam between strategy, design, and engineering.

Responsibilities

• Interview stakeholders to map workflows, ownership, authoring experience, and governance.
• Facilitate discovery workshops to align on requirements and bring structure to complex content landscapes.
• Audit content estates for structure, reuse potential, and quality.
• Design channel-agnostic content models (types, fields, relationships, taxonomies) and translate them into CMS implementation requirements.
• Map migration paths from legacy systems to new platforms.
• Document risks, dependencies, and key decisions.
• Recommend governance models for sustainable content operations.
• Stay engaged through build as the content-accountable reviewer: answering questions, QAing against the model, and adapting when reality pushes back.
• Contribute to content design: UX writing, component patterns, and editorial guidance.

Benefits

• Medical, Life, Dental/Vision, and many more insurance types
• Employer 401k match - 4%
• Happy hours, dinners, excursions, and other company events
• Office snacks and drinks + a fancy Bevi water machine with flavored water
• A recreational group that regularly competes in city leagues for softball and volleyball
• An office in the heart of downtown Chicago with a gym, food court, Walgreens, rooftop bar, outdoor sports court, and other amenities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed