VP, Strategist
Primary stack
Nice to have's
Job description
About the Position
VP, Strategist
US, Remote Friendly
Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.
We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.
Responsibilities
Craft & Delivery
- Define AI and digital strategy for major client engagements, owning the opportunity portfolio from discovery through scale roadmaps
- Lead complex, multi-stakeholder strategy engagements independently, driving alignment across executive, operational, and technical audiences
- Build and present board- and executive-level business cases with clear tradeoffs, value quantification, and pragmatic recommendations
- Design and lead evaluation (Evals) strategy to improve AI system effectiveness, accuracy, and calibration across client programs
- Create reusable strategy accelerators including playbooks, reference architectures, evaluation templates, and agent patterns that help clients scale consistently
- Define AI governance and responsible AI frameworks that fit the client's regulatory context, risk posture, and operational realities
- Make ideas real quickly by building agent workflows, conversational experiences, and AI-enabled demonstrations using modern tools
- Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, and Figma AI - and agentic frameworks as a core part of how strategy gets built and validated (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, Vercel AI SDK, AWS Strands)
Collaboration & Communication
- Serve as a senior strategic partner to client leadership, building long-term trusted relationships grounded in business outcomes and honest counsel
- Lead the most complex client sessions including executive briefings, strategic planning workshops, and multi-stakeholder alignment forums
- Communicate strategy, tradeoffs, and recommendations with clarity and conviction at the executive level
Leadership & Influence
- Establish strategic delivery standards and ways of working on the engagements you support
- Mentor senior and mid-level analysts, helping them grow their strategic thinking, client skills, and delivery impact
- Contribute to business development, proposals, and the growth of R&P's strategy practice
- Act as an escalation point on complex scope, prioritization, and strategic framing challenges
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience in management consulting, product strategy, AI strategy, or a related field
- Expert-level understanding of AI concepts including LLMs, RAG, agentic systems, evaluation frameworks, responsible AI, and enterprise AI operating models
- Demonstrated track record of leading AI and digital strategy engagements end-to-end across complex, multi-stakeholder organizations
- Expert applied experience with AI tools for strategy, prototyping, and productivity (e.g., Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Figma AI)
- Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks as a core part of strategy and prototyping work (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, Vercel AI SDK, AWS Strands)
- Experience designing evaluation strategies and guiding conversations on model calibration and AI system performance
- Strong executive communication and advisory skills with a track record of influencing senior leaders across business and IT
- Experience creating reusable strategy assets, practice accelerators, and reference architectures
- Experience contributing to business development, proposals, or practice growth
- Track record of mentoring strategy practitioners and lifting team quality and craft
Nice to Have
- A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.
- A fast learner who knows you don't know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.
- Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.
- Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.
- Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.
- All in. You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.
- Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.
- Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.
We Offer
- Compensation: The salary range for this role is $180,000 USD - $210,000 USD with no bonus or variable compensation.
- Comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance, and 401(k) to eligible employees.
About the Company
At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.
Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.
© Robots & Pencils. This job description was sourced from the employer's public career page. TheJob is not the employer — we index the posting and route candidates to the source. All content rights and hiring decisions belong to the employer.
Founded in 2009, Robots & Pencils began with the then-contrarian view that mobile would be more transformative than the Internet. That early vision proved true, and it’s still at the heart of everything we do.Today, we’re a global digital innovation company trusted by leading organizations worldwide. We develop advanced software — including mobile apps, web platforms, and enterprise systems — for top-tier clients across various industries.In February 2025, we opened our newest office in Lviv, Ukraine. This marks an exciting chapter in our continued global growth. We’re building a strong local team to collaborate with our colleagues across North and South America and Europe — all working together on high-impact, meaningful products.At Robots & Pencils, we’ve designed our company around talent, not location. This remote-friendly mindset helps us attract world-class engineers, designers, and product experts who are passionate about shaping the future through technology.If you’re looking to join a mission-driven team that values innovation, autonomy, and creativity, let’s connect.