Forward Deployed Strategist

About Drivepoint

Drivepoint is AI for consumer brands: not just finance, the whole brand. AI looks easy in a demo, but CPG runs on hard mode, with thousands of SKUs, thin margins, physical inventory and fickle capital. Most brands never get AI from possible to production.

We close that gap. Drivepoint connects all of a brand's data in one place it owns, adds its business context and ready-made CPG workflows, and runs wherever the team works: our app, Claude or ChatGPT through our MCP server, or tools they build themselves.

Forward Deployed Strategist

We're hiring a Forward Deployed Strategist to lead AI deployments at consumer brands, from the first kickoff to the day their team runs on Drivepoint without us. You think like a product person, you've built something from zero, and you use AI every day to get more done.

The role

Every company is trying to deploy AI, and most consumer brands stall on the hard part: messy data and business problems nobody has cracked. As a Forward Deployed Strategist, you walk into a brand as the lead for its AI deployment and solve a problem it has never been able to solve.

You own a set of brands from kickoff until their team runs real work in Drivepoint without us, and you own the outcome: adoption, value, renewal and expansion. Depending on the customer, you may stay on as their partner through the year as new problems come up. You report to our Head of Product and work hybrid in New York City.

What you'll do

• Lead the engagement. Open every session with an agenda and what the customer will walk away with. Ask what decision they're trying to make before anything gets built. Close with owners and dates, and drive the plan until it runs without you.
• Crack business problems they've never answered. Which retailer actually makes money after trade spend? Can we call this month's wholesale close from open POs before it hits the books? Where is cash stuck in inventory? You frame the question, find the data that answers it, and get the answer into their hands.
• Own the outcome. Track whether each brand is getting value, fix it when it isn't, and set up the renewal and expansion.
• Get the data right. Connect Shopify, Amazon, retailers, 3PLs, ad platforms and the books with the customer and their agencies, and make the numbers trusted. When two numbers don't match, you find out why.
• Put AI to work. Tailor our AI workflows to each brand and set them up to run on their own.
• Steer implementation partners. Brief partners on custom builds, keep them on schedule, and check their work before the customer sees it.
• Turn field work into product. When a problem repeats across brands, prototype the fix and bring the evidence to the product team.

What this role is

Part consultant, part product manager, part operator, and not a sales role. You'll build every day, mostly with AI tools, but the job is knowing what to build and why, then making sure it gets used.

What success looks like

• First 30 days: you shadow live engagements, learn our stack and workflow library, and run your first customer sessions with support.
• By 90 days: you lead your own set of brands, each with trusted data and at least one problem solved that it couldn't solve before.
• Ongoing: your brands get to value fast, use Drivepoint without us, and renew and expand. The patterns you find show up in the product.

What you bring

• You've done this kind of work before. 3–6 years in consulting, a startup, product or another customer-facing role where you owned the outcome.
• You think like a product person. You start from the user's problem and the outcome, you can tell when the ask isn't the need, and you notice when ten customers want the same thing.
• You've built something from zero. As a founder, an early employee, a PM who launched a product, or in a venture studio, VC or PE operating role. You talked to the users, decided what to build, and shipped it.
• You love leading implementations. You get excited to own an implementation from kickoff to live, and you're a comfortable project manager: you set the plan, keep owners and dates moving, and nothing slips.
• You build with AI. You use Claude or similar tools every day to get real work done. You understand how data moves from Shopify to a report and can figure out why two numbers don't match.
• You're great with customers. Comfortable leading sessions with founders and execs; clear, warm, direct writing.

Preferred

• You know how a whole consumer brand works. Not just the P&L: channel economics, retail vs. DTC, trade spend, weeks of supply, CAC and retention, landed cost. You talk to a founder, an ops lead and a growth marketer in their own terms.
• You're financially literate. You read a P&L and spot a forecast that doesn't make sense. You don't need to build three-statement models from scratch.
• Consulting, agency or implementation background
• Hands-on with Shopify, Amazon, retailer, 3PL or ad platform data

Application question

Tell us about something you took from 0 to 1. Who was the user, what did you decide not to build, and what happened?

Interview process ~ final interview schedule can still change

• Intro call (30 min) with our Head of Product. Bring something you took from 0 to 1 and walk us through it.
• Working session (90 min, in person in NYC). We hand you an anonymized brand. You run the first 30 minutes of a kickoff as if we were the customer: agenda, questions, what we'll walk away with. Then we give you two numbers that should match and don't, and you talk us through how you'd find out why. You finish with the plan: data to connect, context to capture, the first problems to solve, and a partner brief if one is needed.
• Final interview with our CEO (45 min).
• Reference checks.

Compensation and logistics

• Base salary: $140K–$175K
• Standard benefits package
• Hybrid in New York City; customer work is remote, no travel required
• Reports to the Head of Product

Drivepoint is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome people of every background and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected characteristic.