Lead Industry Strategist

About the role

We're looking for a full-time Lead Industry Strategist. In this role you'll be working in the heart of the dynamic Fintech market. You'll play a role in discovering, defining, developing and launching services around the world that change the way that finance works. Our ambition is to create new businesses that have the customer at their centre. 

You'll join a team that has helped design and launch category-defining digital financial services propositions globally, including with major banks like HSBC, NatWest, and Standard Chartered. You'll get exposure to senior leaders, challenging strategic problems, and the opportunity to see your work turn into real products in the market.

As a Lead Industry Strategist, you will be the insight and strategy partner on client engagements. You will bring clarity to ambiguous questions by combining industry research, competitor analysis, market insight, and structured storytelling.

Your work underpins major decisions:

• Where should a client play?
• What customer problem should they solve?
• How should they differentiate?
• Does the opportunity make strategic sense?

This role offers a competitive salary between £80k-£90k per year.

Key Responsibilities

You will be responsible for the industry and commercial analysis on our client engagements. 

Commercial Strategy & Business Case Development

• Research, draft and deliver high-quality, timely and relevant insights, advice and strategy recommendations to our clients through projects, advisory, reports, speeches and other formats.
• Use existing market data, forecasts, and financial models to evaluate opportunities.
• Challenge assumptions and translate commercial outputs into clear, strategic recommendations.
• Assess impact vs. effort and cost vs. benefit trade-offs for different strategic paths.

Note: You won't be expected to be a financial modelling expert — instead, you will interpret commercial data, pressure-test assumptions, and guide strategic recommendations.

Industry & Competitor Research

• Develop a deep understanding of fintech, including both direct-to-customer propositions and emerging technology vendors, and the technologies that underlie their solutions.
• Be able to interview both business executives and consumers and then apply Jobs to be Done thinking to identify underserved opportunities in the market to create differentiated, digitally native propositions.
• Analyse competitive strategies using public financials, commercial disclosures and investor materials 
• Develop clear points of view on how markets are evolving and what will create advantage going forward.

Client Leadership & Delivery

• Work directly on client projects, often leading the strategy workstreams, conducting research about or benchmarking technologies, vendors and/or competitors to address the unique challenges faced by specific clients.
• Lead or work in a small highly skilled team of researchers, strategists, product managers and clients to identify, create and develop world-class digital financial propositions and get them to market.
• Lead workstreams, structure deliverables and facilitate client workshops.
• Work directly with senior executives to validate strategies and secure buy-in.
• Mentor junior strategists and analysts within engagements.

Skills/Experience

You are commercially strong, analytical, and plugged into fintech. You are comfortable owning complex analytical deliverables and turning insight into action.

You have:

• Passion and curiosity about fintech and the future of financial services. 
• Strong opinions and expertise about how technology is changing or will change how banking, payments, investments and insurance work and the future of financial services.
• 6–8 years of experience in strategy consulting, corporate strategy, commercial finance, VC/PE, equity research, or similar analytical roles.
• Demonstrated expertise in financial modelling, market sizing, and business case development.
• Ability to analyse competitive positioning and industry dynamics.
• Comfort and enthusiasm for collaborating with diverse, multi-disciplinary teams in an agile environment.
• Outstanding communication skills — able to simplify complexity and influence senior stakeholders.
• Client management skills, with the ability to build strong trusted relationships.

You are:

• Curious about fintech and motivated by shaping the future of financial services.
• Detail-oriented, rigorous with data, and comfortable with ambiguity.
• Able to travel for client work as necessary.