Strategy Director - Commerce

Who are we? 

A world where complexity is the only constant demands a new breed of company. Brave Bison is a different beast: a media, marketing and technology company purpose built for the digital era. 

Our universe is made up of award-winning business arms Brave Bison, Engage, SocialChain and MTM. And we’re underpinned by leading marketing training practice, MiniMBA, as well as our very own social-first media network who deliver monthly views in the billions for some of the biggest channels in sport and entertainment across YouTube, Snap, Meta and TikTok. 

We’re a global collective who live and breathe digital, working with some of the boldest brands in the world to capitalise on the complexity that defines the modern marketing landscape. 

Our mission

New platforms, new behaviours, new audiences, new trends, new technologies, new regulations—our clients’ worlds get more complex daily. Their agency partnerships shouldn’t. It’s our job to cut through the chaos, make the complex simple and navigate a clear path to growth for them. 

That’s why we make it our mission to capitalise on complexity for our clients—across consultancy, capability and execution—by crafting dynamic digital solutions that outpace tomorrow’s challenges. 

Our values

We’re a proudly diverse business comprised of deep specialists across media, marketing, training and technology. Although our skills, backgrounds and beliefs may differ, we are united by four core shared values:

• Bold Curiosity.

We run at change and challenge convention because we love to push the boundaries of what the world thinks is possible. We champion discovery, go deep into our clients’ worlds and are always hungry to learn more about them, our specialisms and each other. 

• Connected Clarity.

We are focused in our collaboration — joining the right dots between our clients, our partners and our herd of experts to deliver agile solutions at speed and scale. We set a shared ambition from the outset, are transparent at every stage and always strive to make the complex simple.

• Positive Encouragement.

We want to make working with us the best part of someone’s day. We lift one other up, find the fun in the day to day and are committed to ensuring everyone belongs.

• Constant Impact.

We believe in outcomes over outputs. We’re goal orientated, results driven and data-led. We show up with passion every day. And we’re always honing our craft.

Brave Bison Commerce

With over 300 ecommerce projects and £2billion worth of transactions under our belt, we’ve designed and built hundreds of bespoke digital solutions for complex B2B, B2C, D2C and B2B2C companies.

Whether we’re modernising a monolith platform or building a fully composable solution, we ensure our clients are ready to meet customers anywhere – online, mobile, in-store or on social – unlocking a brave new world of possibility.

About the Role

Brave Bison Performance & Commerce is a specialist ecommerce systems integrator, building and running commerce platforms for ambitious organisations across retail, services, B2B trade, and financial services. Our clients range from household names to fast-growing challengers, and they share one thing: complex commerce needs with real commercial stakes.

As our client base grows and the ecommerce landscape shifts faster than ever, we are creating a new strategic function at the heart of how we think, sell, and grow.

The person in this role owns the problem. Before a solution is designed, before a scope is written, before a pitch is built, this person has done the hard work of understanding what a client or prospect is trying to achieve, where the real value lies, and what is genuinely getting in the way. That clarity is what makes everything else possible.

This is also a highly visible role with a forward view. You will be critical in setting the strategic direction of the Commerce business. You’ll look ahead at ecommerce is going, what that means for the brands and organisations we work with, and how Brave Bison Commerce needs to be positioned to serve them well. You will bring that perspective into pitches, client conversations, and the way the management team thinks about the future.

This is not a Business Analyst role, and it is not a delivery role. Our solutions architects and BA team are responsible for the technical answer. This role is responsible for making sure we are answering the right question and preparing us and our clients for the future.

The Team

This role reports into the VP of Commerce and sits as a full member of the Commerce Management Team, alongside a Project Director and a Director of Technology. You will contribute to collective business direction, help shape how we operate as a practice, and have real influence over the standards and approach we bring to clients.

You will also hold a dotted line connection to the Business Analyst team, adding problem diagnosis capability on top of their requirements gathering work and raising the overall quality of discovery across the practice.

What You'll Do

Own the problem definition in pre-sales and pitch processes

• Work quickly to understand a prospect's business challenges, commercial pressures, and strategic priorities, and distill them into a clear narrative that gives our solutions architects the right foundation to design from.
• Be the person who can sit across from a senior stakeholder, ask the right questions, and surface what is really driving the need, not just what has been written in a brief (the brief behind the brief).
• Produce concise, well-structured problem statements and strategic briefs that sharpen our pitch responses and ensure our proposed approach is grounded in the client's actual reality.
• Challenge proposed approaches where the solution is running ahead of the problem, and bring the conversation back to what the client is genuinely trying to unlock.

Drive strategic value with tier one clients

• Engage directly with C-suite and Director level stakeholders at our most important accounts, operating as a trusted strategic adviser.
• Lead structured conversations that surface a client's 6 to 12 month priorities, understand where the pressure and the opportunity sit, and translate that into a clear view of where we can make the most difference.
• Build and evolve Key Account Plans for tier one relationships, ensuring our work is always connected to what matters commercially to the client, not just what is in scope.
• Establish and improve frameworks for demonstrating value to clients, moving beyond delivery metrics toward the outcomes that matter at board level.

Set our strategic view on the future of ecommerce

• Maintain a sharp, well evidenced point of view on where ecommerce technology and customer experience are heading, and what that means for the organisations we work with.
• Translate developments in AI driven personalisation, agentic commerce, unified commerce architecture, and evolving buyer behaviour into clear implications for clients and for our own positioning.
• Brief and challenge the Commerce Management Team and solutions architects with strategic context ahead of key pitches and account reviews.
• Develop thought leadership and market intelligence that keeps Brave Bison credibly differentiated and commercially relevant.

Strengthen discovery and problem framing across the practice

• Work alongside the Business Analysis team to add a layer of genuine problem diagnosis to their discovery and requirements work, building a more complete picture of the business and customer challenge before solutioning begins.
• Champion the principle that understanding the business and customer challenge is the foundation on which good requirements gathering is built.
• Contribute to the Commerce Management Team on practice direction, quality standards, and how we operate as a business.

Who You Are

We are deliberately looking outside the traditional ecommerce agency talent pool for this role. We want someone who has operated at a senior level inside a client-side organisation, a strategic consultancy, or an advisory capacity where understanding the business problem came before everything else.

Our clients span retail, hospitality, financial services, building and trade, security, and specialist B2B commerce. What they share is commercial complexity and a need for a partner who can think at their level. Your sector background matters less than your ability to quickly understand how a business works, where the pressure and opportunity sit, and how to frame that clearly enough for others to act on.

• You own the problem, not the solution. You are more interested in understanding what a client is really trying to achieve than in arriving at an answer quickly.
• You can hold a room at C-suite level. You are comfortable in a conversation with a CEO, CTO, CFO, or CMO and you know how to ask the questions that get to what actually matters.
• You work quickly under pressure. In a pitch situation, you can absorb information fast, find the thread, and produce something clear and compelling without needing perfect conditions.
• You have a genuine curiosity about where ecommerce is going. You follow market trends and the technology landscape and the structural shifts in how consumers and businesses buy.
• You write and present with conviction. You produce work that is clear, opinionated, and persuasive, not just well structured.
• You are commercially grounded. You understand margins, investment cycles, and why timing matters.
• You are a collaborator who improves the thinking of the people around you and earns influence without needing authority to exercise it.

Background & Experience

• Senior experience in a client side, strategic consultancy, or advisory environment where understanding business problems was your starting point, not a step in a delivery process.
• A track record of working at Director level or above, or of advising organisations at that level.
• Familiarity with ecommerce platforms, technology architecture, and the vendor landscape. You do not need to have been an engineer, but you need to speak credibly to technical teams and curious senior clients.
• Experience of helping organisations define and articulate the value of technology investment to senior stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear, high quality strategic documents independently and at pace.

We are less interested in whether you have a systems integrator background, and more interested in whether you understand how organisations think about their commerce problems from the inside.

What Success Looks Like

In your first 12 months, you will have:

• Contributed directly to the winning of at least one significant new business opportunity by shaping the strategic problem framing that our pitch was built around.
• Led strategic conversations with at least three tier one clients that produced a clearer picture of where value lies and what we should be doing next, deepening those relationships as a result.
• Established a credible point of view on the direction of ecommerce that is being used in client conversations and external facing content.
• Built trusted working relationships with our solutions architects, Project Director, Director of Technology, and VP, and noticeably raised the quality of problem definition at the front end of engagements.
• Introduced or improved at least one framework for evidencing and communicating the commercial value of our work to clients.

What you’ll get 

Our people make us who we are, so to make sure we attract and retain the best and brightest in the industry, we offer an attractive benefits package.  

But not only that, we are the UK’s first carbon neutral agency (a status we have held since 2018), with a serious commitment to monitoring and reducing the impact our work has on the planet across three core sustainability pillars of Greenhouse Gases, Waste & Recycling and Sustainable Consumption. 

Then there’s a whole host of benefits – from discounted gym memberships and free eye tests to an employee pension scheme and enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption package. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the benefits we think you might also like: 

• Dynamic working:To keep that work-life harmony in check, we're flexible on where and when you work 

• Private medical insurance:To keep you fighting fit and give you and your family peace of mind. 

• Income protection:We know it feels good to be covered, just in case. 

• Calm Subscription:Now more than ever, it’s important to mind your mind! 

• 25 days annual leave:This increases to 27 days after three years with us, and then increases every subsequent year up to a max. of 30 days 

• Christmas closure:No need to save holiday days for the Christmas closure period. It's on us! 

• Birthdays off:One extra day to celebrate your big day 

• Summer hours:Between June and Aug we finish at 15.00 every Friday. 

• Online coaching and mental health support:Unlimited via OpenUp 

• Remote Working:Work abroad for up to one month a year. 

• Performance & Salary: Reviewed twice a year for everyone. 

Finally, we’re proud and committed to being an equal opportunity workplace, providing equal opportunities for all and treating all existing employees and all job applicants in the same way, regardless of their age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity status and marital & civil partnership status.