Lead Technology Strategist
- Full-time
Company Description
Digitas is relentlessly committed to help brands better connect with people through Connected Digital Experiences. Our team is deliberately diversified — with experts in data, strategy, creative, media, and tech working seamlessly across capabilities and continents to achieve ambitious outcomes through ideas that excite, provoke and inspire.
Digitas’ UK Technology department sits firmly at the centre of the agency, with our technologists brought into client engagements from the very beginning. Some of our on-going product programme engagements include Formula 1’s website, apps, and backend services; Hastings Direct’s mobile apps; Honda’s European websites; and E.ON’s mobile apps.
Across Digitas Technology our people are loosely grouped into Tech Product, Tech Engineering, and Tech Operations, but always work together and with colleagues in other departments to successfully deliver projects. Our Tech Strategists sit within Tech Product and are critical connection points to Digitas’ wider departments and capabilities.
Job Description
As a Lead Technology Strategist, you will be responsible for product strategy leadership and delivery across a large-scale programme or a number of projects. You will engage directly with our clients, collaborating on vision, product strategy, product roadmap and challenging them to embrace novel and effective solutions and processes that meet their business needs. You will ensure that product, tech strategy, and related tasks are carried out and are fit for purpose, improving existing, or defining new approaches and processes where necessary. You will verify that the delivered product meets the needs of users and achieves clients’ strategic business objectives.
In addition, you will collaborate with the wider Tech Product team and related capabilities to answer questions for the agency and clients on forward-looking innovation, technology and product trends as part of our on-going engagements and new business.
In much of their work, our Technology Strategists work in cross-discipline teams with a focus on Experience Design (UI/UX), Tech Engineering (Developers, QAs, Architects) and Project Management colleagues. You will also collaborate closely with Tech, Delivery, and Creative Directors on programme leadership and direction.
Responsibilities
- Set the vision and strategy for a client’s digital product and technology platform capabilities, with a focus on user needs and business objectives
- Translate complex user needs and business objectives into clear and manageable product requirements, with associated roadmaps, plans, with an underlying goal of facilitating technical and solution requirements, planning and estimation enabling seamless and effective technical delivery
- Carry out product strategy and product management tasks to support on-going engagements and specific project deliverables
- Act as the product and experience strategy authority in client pitches, discovery meetings, and on-going engagements, setting and delivering the product strategy for the project delivery team
- Develop effective relationships with client product owners and other stakeholders, working collaboratively with your counterparts within client teams to deliver and facilitate work that enables the success of the wider engagement, encouraging adherence to the most effective ways of working and making clients advocates for our methodologies, practices and expertise
- Plan, manage and implement tech, product, and experience strategy projects within a programme, or as standalone projects
- Working with colleagues in Tech Product and the wider agency to continuously improve existing approaches or add new capabilities to drive higher quality and more effective work
- Be aware of, assess, synthesise, and share forward-looking innovation, technology and product trends, backed by innate curiosity and enthusiasm for digital experiences and technology
Qualifications
- Holistic mindset, comfortable with ambiguity, with an analytical approach to thinking, together with a natural curiosity and enthusiasm in technology and business topics, with a willingness to learn and be self-guided where necessary
- Collaborative nature and pro-active attitude, comfortable acting as a decision-maker and setting the direction for wider team
- Ability to drive, set a vision for, and define experience and/or product strategy for digital product and technology transformation projects
- Planning, creation, articulation and presenting of strategic and product artefacts and approaches from early-stage definition, through design and build, to on-going operation
- Ability to translate client objectives and user needs into features that are able to be prioritised according to business requirements whilst taking into account other impacts on priority such as technical complexity
- Ability to produce meaningful and tangible outputs at the beginning of a project lifecycle that are then able to be utilised to set up experience design and technical delivery teams up for success
- Working with other disciplines within a project team to ensure that there is full traceability from feature ideation to implementation and that the outcomes meet underlying product goals
- Confident client facing skills with ability to deal with challenging situations and a collaborative mindset able to work in and lead cross-discipline teams
- Experience working within a digital agency environment would be beneficial, but is not required
You should ideally have experience of working in projects using some of the following technologies:
o Consumer and/or business focused web and mobile apps
o Web CMS/DXP solutions (e.g. AEM, Sitecore, Episerver, Contentful)
o E-Commerce solutions (e.g. Magento, Shopify)
o CRM integration (e.g. Salesforce, Oracle)
o Cloud technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP)
o Emerging Technologies (e.g. voice, XR, automation)
You should ideally have experience or familiarity in some of the following areas:
o Tech / Product Strategy
o Product Management
o Experience Design
o Creative Tech
o Business Analysis
o Technical Solutions and Architecture
o Agile project management
Additional Information
As part of our dedication to create an inclusive and diverse workforce, Publicis Groupe UK is committed to equal access to opportunity for people without regard to race, age, sex, disability, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, gender identity or religion. We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments for candidates with disabilities in our application process.
If you need assistance or adjustment due to a disability, please contact us.