Director, Corporate Strategy

Director of Corporate Strategy & AI Intelligence

As the Director of Corporate Strategy & AI Intelligence, you will serve as the “Scout” for the Strategic Acceleration Business Unit. You will lead the charge in researching, piloting, and leveraging emerging AI tools and large language models (LLMs) to uncover new growth opportunities, map competitive intelligence, and provide automated workflow insights. Your primary mandate is to define whether the company should “Partner, Build, or Buy” when evaluating new concepts to expand our home, lawn, and garden footprint.

• AI Exploration & Market Intelligence:
  Research and pilot cutting-edge AI tools to uncover potential corporate partners, conduct market forecasting, and deliver deep competitive intelligence.
• Strategic Advisory ("Partner vs. Build vs. Buy"):
  Formulate data‑driven strategic recommendations for the Business Development and M&A teams based on AI insights and market analysis.
• Cross‑Functional Shared Service:
  Operate as a centralized technical resource, providing technical insights to the M&A team (for due diligence) and the New Business Development team (for product enhancement).
• Team Leadership:
  Directly manage the AI Market Intelligence team, including Managers and Analysts focused on M&A, Strategic Planning, and Portfolio Enhancement.
• Daily Tool Utilization:
  Integrate advanced AI tools and automated workflows into daily strategic operations to maintain a high‑velocity innovation pipeline.
• Key Collaborators:
  Cross‑functional collaboration with the Directors of M&A and New Business Development. Participation in monthly "Sync-and-Accelerate" meetings.

• Experience:
  
  7–10+ years of progressive experience in Corporate Strategy, Management Consulting (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain), Venture Capital, or Corporate Development/M&A.
• Framework Mastery:
  Proven track record of designing and executing "Partner, Build, or Buy" frameworks, market sizing (TAM/SAM), and commercial due diligence.
• People Management: 3+ years of experience directly managing and developing high-performing teams of analysts or strategic managers.
• Education:
  
  Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Engineering, or a related field. An MBA or advanced degree is highly preferred.

• Hands‑on AI
  
  Experience:
  
  Demonstrated experience piloting and deploying LLM‑powered solutions, custom GPTs, or retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) workflows to solve business problems.
• Data & Scripting
  
  Skills:
  
  Proficiency with Python or R for data analysis, market scraping, or API utilization (e.g., interacting with OpenAI, Anthropic, or Hugging Face APIs).
• The Tech Stack:
  Familiarity with modern data architectures, including vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Chroma), business intelligence tools (Tableau, PowerBI), and workflow automation platforms (e.g., Make, Zapier, Lang Chain).
• AI Literacy:
  Deep understanding of current AI capabilities, limitations (hallucinations, data privacy, security restrictions), and cost structures (token management).

The starting budgeted pay range for this role will generally fall between $ - $ per year. Scotts will consider various factors in determining the actual pay including your skills, qualifications, experience, and geographical location. In addition to the determined base salary, this role is also incentive eligible under our corporate bonus programs. For remote roles where the final candidate resides in Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon or Washington, state required pay thresholds will be factored into base salary.

• Our Live Total Health program provides you with options to align to your personal needs. Selections range from medical, dental and vision coverage for you, your spouse/domestic partner and dependents to an outstanding wellness reimbursement program to an unbelievable 401k match (up to 7.5%) as well as a 15% discount on company stock and much more
• We know our talent is our most precious asset and your unique development contributes to our organization’s success now and in the future. Career growth at our company is not always a ladder. It’s much more like…