Senior Director, AI Advisory - Enterprise Transformation

Job Description:

We welcome remote candidates based in the continental United States Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global performance marketing agency that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. The agency’s heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies.

Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With 16,000+ employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with additional offices in the US, Europe, and Asia. In 2016, the agency joined the Dentsu Aegis Network.

Job Description Merkle is seeking a strategic business leader with Adobe Experience Cloud expertise and martech ecosystem knowledge to join the AI Advisory, Enterprise Transformation practice as a Sr. Director, Lead Strategist. This individual will operate at the executive level, combining organizational transformation expertise, change management rigor, and value-driven advisory to anchor the program’s strategic direction and drive enterprise client outcomes.

The Lead Strategist is a program-level leadership role operating across two distinct dimensions: as the primary strategic advisor on a large enterprise account and as a senior thought partner providing coverage and oversight across all delivery pods and resourcing groups within a broader client engagement. This individual bridges strategic vision with tactical execution, ensuring the program delivers measurable business value while building client-side organizational capability.

The role combines the advisory mindset of organizational transformation consulting with hands-on accountability for client value realization. There are no immediate direct reports for this role, but the Lead Strategist operates with influence across program leadership, delivery teams, and client stakeholder groups, carrying full ownership of strategic planning and change enablement.

• Lead strategic consulting engagements that assess organizational readiness, operating model design, ways of working, governance, and change management within large-scale enterprise transformation initiatives and programs
• Lead organizational readiness, operating model design, and change management strategies for large-scale Adobe Experience Cloud transformations; assess current-state capability, identify operational gaps, and design future-state operating models that enable clients to sustain and scale their Adobe investments
• Drive operational transformation through workflow analysis, business process optimization, capability mapping, and implementation roadmaps that prioritize improvement initiatives against strategic goals, feasibility, value
• Partner with delivery teams to identify and accelerate value drivers; translate strategic priorities into clear activation sequences, ensuring each engagement builds client capability while moving toward larger program objectives
• Provide strategic coverage and guidance across all delivery pods within a critical client program with one of our leading partners; serve as a strategic sounding board for Pod Leads and the Merkle Leadership Team on value realization, client account health, and expansion opportunities
• Facilitate workshops, discovery sessions, and prioritization exercises that require managing competing client opinions, agendas, and ambiguous inputs
• Translate the impact of AI tools and agentic capabilities on marketing workflows, skillsets, operating model, and ways of working
• Understand how AI tools, automation, and human expertise work together in modern operating models across business functions
• Lead change management activities and plans related to agentic capability enablement or deployment
• Surface operational risks related to technology implementation, migration, or adoption initiatives
• Support stakeholder mapping, readiness surveys, skillset and training assessments, change communication and messaging, as well as KPIs to measure and track ongoing change adoption
• Design governance structures to clarify roles, decision rights, and accountability in…