Design Thinking Strategist

• 24 Month W2 Contract
• Hybrid - onsite 3 days/week
• Candidates must be local to the Charlotte Metro area for consideration
• The pay for this W-2 position ranges from $69.00-$73.80 per hour.

In this role, you will serve as a human-centered design and research leader, partnering closely with product, project, and business teams to discover new opportunities, improve experiences, and drive measurable business value. This leader brings deep empathy for users alongside a strong understanding of business and technology, enabling teams to solve complex problems holistically.

Using systems thinking and research-led strategy, you will help business partners envision solutions that leverage context, insights, and emerging trends. Through close collaboration with product teams, you will ensure clear problem framing, guide teams through ambiguity, and support build test learn iterations that lead to high impact outcomes. Operating at the portfolio level, you will help business leaders align around a shared vision and integrate a portfolio of initiatives to deliver cohesive, end to end product and service experiences.

• Serve as a primary design and research consultant and strategic partner for product teams and business stakeholders, including senior leaders.
• Plan, conduct, and synthesize human?centered research to inform product, service, and process decisions.
• Lead problem framing and opportunity definition to ensure alignment with business goals and user needs.
• Plan and facilitate cross?functional and leadership?level workshops to support discovery, ideation, alignment, and decision?making.
• Translate research insights into actionable artifacts (e.g., personas, customer journeys, service blueprints, experience principles).
• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and data teams to ensure insights inform feasibility and delivery planning.
• Operate at the portfolio level to help business partners shape strategic vision and reduce risk through research?informed experimentation.
• Support teams through build and validation phases to ensure solutions deliver cohesive, end?to?end experiences aligned to business objectives.

• 6+ years of experience in design research, product strategy, service design, or experience strategy roles.
• Experience working within a large enterprise organization or in a consulting/agency environment supporting complex business ecosystems.
• Demonstrated expertise in human?centered design and research?led problem solving.
• Strong experience planning and facilitating design thinking and innovation workshops with cross?functional and leadership teams.
• Proficiency in qualitative and evaluative user research, including research synthesis and insight translation.
• Experience applying service design and systems thinking to shape end?to?end product or service experiences.
• Ability to connect research insights to business objectives and influence product and strategic decision?making.
• Experience in the following skills and methodologies
  
  
  
  • Design Thinking
  • Innovation Workshops
  • User Research
  • Quantitative and Qualitative Research and Analysis
  • User Experience Design
  • Interaction Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Visual Design
  • Service Design
  • Prototyping (various levels of fidelity)
  
  
  
  

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