Strategic Advisor

Job Description: Principal Strategic Advisor – Retail & Athleisure Planning

Location: Vancouver, BC (Hybrid)

Position Type: Full-time (Strategic Advisory)

Industry Vertical: Retail & Apparel (Athleisure)

Role Overview

We are seeking an industry-veteran Principal Strategic Advisor to serve as the executive-level liaison for our premier athleisure retail client. This role is highly strategic, designed for an expert who will engage directly with senior business leaders (VPs, CXOs, and Directors of Merchandising and Planning) to align their long-term business vision with our technology delivery roadmap.

Rather than getting bogged down in daily operations or detailed requirements documentation, you will oversee the strategic portfolio, advise on enterprise-level transformation, and govern high-level priority planning. You will act as the ultimate arbiter between senior client executives and our technical delivery leadership, ensuring that enterprise-wide production releases are strategically timed and their high-level business impacts are fully understood and managed.

Key Responsibilities

• Executive Business Advisory: Serve as a trusted advisor to senior retail business leaders. Facilitate steering committees to translate corporate merchandising and financial strategies into technology-enabled initiatives.
• Strategic Priority & Roadmap Steering: Align senior business priorities with our delivery team's capabilities. Help client leadership navigate trade-offs, define MVP scopes for major initiatives, and establish release sequencing.
• Strategic Release Governance: Evaluate high-level business risks and operational impacts of major production releases on critical retail milestones (e.g., peak seasons, buy-session deadlines). Ensure executive-level business readiness.
• Enterprise Architecture Alignment: Provide high-level governance to ensure that platform changes respect, scale, and modernize the client's complex merchandise hierarchies, visual planning systems, and core data flows.

Domain Expertise & Qualifications

Core Experience Metrics (Strictly Required):

• Overall Experience: Minimum 20+ years of professional experience in enterprise-level business consulting, technology delivery with corporate retail leadership.
• Retail Specialization: At least 8 to 10 years of dedicated experience directly within the Retail / Apparel domain (ideally with direct exposure to premium, vertically integrated, or athleisure brands).

Required Strategic Domain Expertise (Must have deep knowledge in at least TWO of the following):

1. Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP): High-level knowledge of corporate budgeting, Open-to-Buy (OTB) policies, and margin management at an enterprise scale.
2. Visual Assortment Planning: Strategic understanding of how digital, visual, and localized layouts influence buying decisions and omni-channel inventory allocation.
3. Product & Merchandise Hierarchies: Deep experience structuring master data governance and product classifications across complex global retail organizations.
4. Associated Data Flows: Architectural understanding of enterprise data exchanges (PLM to ERP/WMS/eCommerce) to help executives visualize how data boundaries support business goals.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. An equivalent combination of education and relevant sales experience will also be considered.