Brand Design Ref XE-BRD-104 Open

Senior Brand Strategist

Lead positioning and brand foundation work for enterprise brands entering new markets or resetting what they stand for.

Illustrative opening — hiring confirms the details before it opens.

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A designer at a white table laid out with trays of coloured material samples, prints and a cutting mat.
The practiceBrand Design
Practice
Brand Design
Location
New Delhi
Work pattern
Hybrid
Level
Senior
Type
Full-time
Experience
6+ years
Salary band
₹24–34 lakh a year Indicative
Openings
1
Posted
Closes
42 days left

About the role

You will run the thinking at the front of our brand programmes: the discovery, the positioning, the principles and the messaging that every designer, writer and agent downstream works from.

The work is for enterprise brands at a turning point — a new market, a merger, a portfolio that has grown faster than its story. You will sit with executive teams, turn what you hear into a clear point of view, and write it so precisely that it can be checked. Our brand-check agents enforce the rules you set, so vague language shows up quickly.

What you will do

  1. Run discovery: stakeholder interviews, market and audience research, and competitive mapping
  2. Write positioning, brand principles and messaging frameworks that designers and agents can apply
  3. Present to executive teams and turn their feedback into recorded decisions
  4. Set the brand rules our checking agents enforce, and review what they flag
  5. Coach designers and writers on applying the strategy in their own work

A typical week

Where the hours go in an ordinary week, and which parts agents carry. Whatever an agent drafts or checks, a person decides what happens next.

Senior Brand Strategist 40 hours in a typical week
  • You30 h · 75%
  • You, with an agent drafting6 h · 15%
  • An agent runs it, you review4 h · 10%

  1. Discovery interviews and workshops

    You run them in person or on video; an agent transcribes and tags themes overnight, and you check the tags against the recordings.

    You10 h

  2. Market and competitor scans

    An agent assembles the first scan from sources you approve; you decide what it means for the client.

    You, with an agent drafting6 h

  3. Writing positioning and messaging

    The part nobody else drafts. Agents may suggest variants of a line you have already written.

    You12 h

  4. Brand-rule checks on live work

    Agents check work in progress against the rules you set; you review what they flag and fix the rules it exposes.

    An agent runs it, you review4 h

  5. Client reviews and coaching the team

    Presenting, recording decisions, and helping designers and writers apply the strategy.

    You8 h

An illustrative split, not a timesheet. The hiring lead walks you through the real one in your first conversation.

What you bring

  • 6+ years in brand strategy at an agency, consultancy or in-house brand team
  • A portfolio of strategy work that visibly changed a brand’s direction
  • Clear, economical writing — you can say it in one sentence, then prove it
  • Comfort presenting to and challenging senior clients

Nice to have

  • Experience with multi-brand or house-of-brands architecture
  • Hands-on use of AI research tools, with a critical eye for what they get wrong

Never a reason to rule anyone out. If you have most of the list above and none of this, apply.

Tools you will use

Grouped by what they are for. Nobody knows all of them on day one.

Model providers
  • Anthropic
  • Perplexity
  • Google Gemini
Collaboration & design
  • Notion
  • Miro
  • Figma

Technologies we work with and license — not partnerships.

Your first 90 days

  1. Days 1–30

    Shadow a live foundation programme and write the interview guide for its next market

  2. Days 31–60

    Lead the discovery for one engagement and present the emerging positioning to the client lead

  3. Days 61–90

    Own a positioning and its brand rules end to end, including the checks the agents run against them

A hand-drawn goal review on dot-grid paper: tallies for weeks one to eleven beside an assess-and-plan column, two pens resting on the page.
The plan is written down before your first day, and you review it with your lead as the weeks go by.

Where you would work

The places this role can be based. Each team agrees its own studio days; remote roles meet in a studio for a team week each quarter.

  • Auto rickshaws on a wide avenue in New Delhi, the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan at the end of the road in evening haze.

    Studio

    New Delhi

    Studio at Aerocity, ten minutes from the airport — handy for client travel.

    Pictured: New Delhi

How and where we work

What we offer

With this role

  • A research budget for the paid reports and panels your engagements need

With every role

  • Health and family

    Medical insurance · Parental leave · Mental health

  • Time

    Paid leave · Winter break · Flexible days

  • Growth

    Learning budget · Growth reviews · Internal moves

  • Setup

    Your own machine · Home office · Team weeks

The full benefits schedule

The team you would join

Brand Design, the practice behind this role.

Strategists and designers who build brand foundations, identities and the systems that keep them consistent — with brand-check agents enforcing the rules they write.

Open roles in this practice
3 on the board
Based in
New Delhi · Ludhiana
Hands sorting a spread of photographic prints on a wooden table, one print held up for a closer look.
The practice at work Brand Design

What Brand Design delivers for clients

About Brand Design

Where this role sits

L4 of 6 · Senior

Owns a workstream. Sets the approach and grows others.

Each level is defined by the scope you own, not years served. Growth reviews twice a year measure you against the six standards at your level.

Ways in, and ways up
  1. L1 Intern A task
  2. L2 Associate A deliverable
  3. L3 Mid A feature
  4. This role L4 Senior A workstream
  5. L5 Lead An engagement
  6. L6 Principal A practice

The rung below

L3 · Mid — A feature. Owns a piece of work end to end.

Next rung

L5 · Lead — An engagement. Leads a team and the client relationship.

How we hire for this role

5 steps, and a reply after every one.

The same five stages we use for every role. Timings are targets; when one slips, we tell you.

  1. Within 5 working days

    Step 1: Read

    A practitioner in the practice reads your application — your links first, your CV second. No keyword filter, no agency.

  2. Week 1 · 45 min

    Step 2: Conversation

    The hiring lead: the role, your work, and the level and salary band — before you invest more time in us.

  3. Week 2 · 2–3 h, paid

    Step 3: Work sample

    A short exercise close to the job, or a deep review of work you have already done. Paid, and never unpaid spec work.

    Work sample · the brief

  4. Week 3 · half a day

    Step 4: Team day

    Meet the people you would work with, in a studio or on video. Ask them anything; they will answer honestly.

  5. Week 3–4

    Step 5: Offer

    In writing, with the level, the salary, the full benefits and a start date that suits you. No exploding deadlines.

What helps an application

  • A link to work you made, with your own part in it named.
  • One project you could talk through for half an hour.
  • If you used AI, a line on how you checked what it produced.
  • Plain words. We read for substance, not polish.

Adjustments. Extra time, questions in advance, captions, a different format — tell us on the form or by email. Asking never counts against you.

Start the application

Senior Brand StrategistNew Delhi · Hybrid · Closes 15 Nov

Apply for this role

Your move

Not the right role yet? Tell us what you would build here.

A speculative application gets the same read as any other: a practitioner in the practice you choose, and a reply either way.

Send a speculative application