Senior Strategist (Service Design + Innovation)

Role Overview

Cabin's Product & Strategy team helps clients navigate complex ecosystems of people, process, policy, and technology, and turns that navigation into services and products that work. This role leads that work end to end: framing the problem, designing the strategy, and staying close enough to execution that the strategy survives contact with delivery.

This is a strategy-led role. You'll spend most of your time in service design, ecosystem thinking, and stakeholder facilitation, the work of connecting frontstage experience to backstage reality and turning ambiguity into a defined path forward. Product craft drives that work: you should be fluent in discovery, roadmapping, and backlog thinking because those are the tools that make a strategy executable.

We're looking for strategists who are genuinely curious about the ways AI is changing work: people already using it to think, research, and build, who want to keep pushing on what it makes possible for clients and for the practice.

Why Cabin

Cabin is a consultancy built around deep focus, problem solving, and long-term client partnership. We work across industries on digital product and service problems that don't have obvious answers yet. You'll work alongside strategists, designers, and engineers on high-visibility engagements, with real latitude to shape how the work gets framed and delivered.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and own the problem from end to end -> Own the client relationship and lead engagements from discovery through delivery, developing services, experiences, and product strategies that hold together across user needs, business goals, and what's operationally feasible. That means translating an ambiguous business problem into a defined scope of work, then staying accountable for the strategy as it moves into execution.
• Drive service design and ecosystem thinking -> Run blueprinting, journey mapping, and stakeholder mapping to connect frontstage experience to backstage reality: the people, processes, systems, and policies that make an experience possible or break it. The craft is in finding the gaps and leverage points that live between those layers, not documenting either one on its own.
• Create clarity in ambiguous spaces -> Facilitate problem framing when the direction isn't clear yet, helping teams decide what to tackle first and why before anyone commits to a solution. Design experiments and pilots that test full service moments, people, process, and technology together, rather than validating an interface in isolation.
• Bring product fluency into the work -> Ground strategy in real user research and market validation, and understand roadmapping, backlog prioritization, and agile delivery well enough to know what's actually executable. This is what keeps a strategy from becoming a deck: knowing where the technical and organizational constraints actually are.
• Orchestrate and deliver -> Coordinate across design, product, engineering, and data to keep engagements moving toward a real deliverable, not just a recommendation. Use blueprints, journeys, measurable insights, and roadmaps as the artifacts that get stakeholders who don't naturally agree to a shared decision.
• Communicate, coach, and grow the practice -> Present strategy to audiences ranging from frontline staff to executive teams, and coach client teams in service design methods so they can keep using the tools after the engagement ends. Contribute to proposals and mentorship, and act as a subject matter expert Cabin can put in front of a client.

Qualifications

• Track record leading service design or product strategy work, with a portfolio showing blueprints, products, journeys, or ecosystem work.
• Hands-on curiosity with AI tools: already using them to think, research, and build.
• Strong human-centered and service design fundamentals, with a systems mindset.
• Working knowledge of product leadership: discovery, roadmapping, backlog prioritization, and sprint facilitation.
• Exceptional facilitation and communication skills across frontline and executive audiences.
• Comfortable defining the right question in ambiguous problem spaces.
• 5+ years of relevant experience, ideally client-facing consultancy work.

Focus Areas / Role Differentiation

This role sits within a team that covers several areas of depth. If you're applying, tell us which one matches your strengths best. We'll also help you find the right fit through the interview process if you're not sure.

Senior Innovation Strategist
Focused on ecosystem thinking and problem framing to imagine new systems and experiences: mapping how a complex mix of people, process, policy, and technology fits together, and finding where the leverage points are. Strong in facilitation and in guiding client teams through ambiguity toward a clear strategic direction, using service design in the midst of a broad toolset.

Senior Product Strategist
Focused on product strategy and delivery: research, roadmap definition, and the product management discipline to take an idea or plan through an actual build. Strong in user needs research, backlog ownership, sprint-level prioritization, and day-to-day partnership with design and engineering, staying accountable for a product from strategic direction through shipped software, not just the plan for getting there.

Senior Service Designer
Focused on the craft of service design itself: building and facilitating the blueprints, journey maps, and future-state artifacts that other strategists and clients use to make decisions. Deep hands-on capability with the artifacts themselves, with a capability in measurement, new service innovation, and behavioral change.

Senior Strategist, AI and Data
Focused on delivering AI and data-driven outcomes as the client-facing product itself, not just using AI as part of how the work gets done. Designs and frames engagements where AI capability, data infrastructure, or a data-enabled strategy are what the client is actually buying, and takes those engagements from framing through delivery.