Client Strategy Director

Location: New Haven, Connecticut · Employment Type: Full-time · Compensation: $115,000–$140,000 base with performance-based upside

About the role

Digital Surgeons is looking for a rare kind of person. Part brand strategist. Part writer. Part client partner. Part creative producer. This is not a traditional account management job. We do not need someone to traffic requests, take notes, and keep a project plan warm. We need someone who can walk into a room with a founder or executive, hear what they are saying, notice what they are not saying, and help the team find the real problem worth solving.

You will become the primary strategic partner for our branding clients. You will own the relationship from kickoff through delivery, lead discovery and strategy conversations, help shape messaging, turn conversations into sharp briefs, manage feedback and decisions, and keep the work moving without turning the creative process into bureaucracy. Being in the room early does not make this a sales job. No pricing, no negotiating, no chasing clients. You will own whether we understand the problem before anyone proposes a solution.

You will work directly with our founder and our client partners, and internally with our creative leads, who own the visual expression and design craft delivery of our studio. Your job is to create the conditions for great creative work and make sure the client feels heard, guided, challenged, and excited along the way, and the creative leads have clear requirements to build from. You will also stay close enough to the business to recognize what a client needs next. A great brand project should not end with a goodbye email. It might lead to a brand toolkit, a website, a campaign, a content system, digital products, new technology, or another problem we can help solve.

Responsibilities

• Become the day-to-day strategic lead and trusted partner for branding clients
• Lead discovery sessions, stakeholder interviews, workshops, strategy reviews, and client presentations
• Turn messy conversations, competing opinions, and business goals into clear briefs and decisions
• Help develop positioning, messaging, narrative, naming, and verbal strategy when the work calls for it
• Set creative leads up for success with context, clarity, useful feedback, and strong creative direction
• Own client communication, meeting cadence, expectations, decisions, scope awareness, and follow-through
• Keep projects moving while protecting the quality of the work and the relationship
• Spot friction early and solve problems before they become drama
• Build trust with senior clients so they see you as a thinking partner, not a vendor
• Identify natural opportunities to expand the relationship when there is a real client need we can solve
• Partner directly with the founder on key strategic moments, major presentations, and relationship growth

Requirements

Your background may not fit neatly into one box. In fact, that’s the point. You may have been a brand strategist, copywriter, messaging strategist, account director, creative strategist, producer, or someone who has worn several of those hats inside a great boutique studio.

• Deep experience in branding, strategy, messaging, creative services, or a closely related field
• Strong writing instincts — you can hear when language is generic and push until it gets specific
• Enough visual taste and design literacy to have a smart creative conversation without needing to be the person pushing pixels
• A natural ability to make clients feel comfortable, understood, and confident
• The confidence to challenge a client without making the room weird
• Strong facilitation skills — you know how to run a meeting that actually gets somewhere
• High ownership — you do not wait around for someone to tell you what the next move is
• Strong commercial instincts — you can recognize the difference between helping a client and selling them something they do not need
• Comfort working directly with founders and senior executives
• A love for the craft — you care about the quality of the thinking and the work, not just whether the project shipped

This could be especially interesting if you have spent time at an agency or studio and thought, “I love the work and the clients. I just want more ownership, less machinery, and a closer seat to the decisions.”

What this role is not

• This is not a traffic manager role
• This is not a pure project manager role
• This is not a messenger — you do not forward the client's words to the creative leads, or the creative leads' work back to the client, without adding judgment
• This is not a salesperson wearing a strategy costume
• This is not a job where you disappear into Slack and send status updates all day

We want someone who likes being in the room.

How we work

You will report directly to the founder and work closely with a small senior team. We are rebuilding more in-person creative energy into the studio, so we want someone who can spend meaningful time with us face-to-face on our campus in District New Haven, Connecticut. You do not need to sit in the studio five days a week. You do need to believe that chemistry, trust, and some of the best thinking still happen faster when people get into a room together.

We care about judgment, curiosity, follow-through, taste, and how you make people feel. We care less about whether your resume follows a perfect agency career ladder.

Compensation

We expect full-time base compensation to land in the $115,000–$140,000 range, with performance-based upside tied to client health, retention, successful delivery, and relationship growth. The exact structure will depend on experience and the shape of the role we build together.