Content Strategy Director

Higher Ed & Mission-Driven Brands

Princeton. Columbia. USC. NYU. IEEE. Make-A-Wish. United Way. These higher-ed and mission-driven brands rely on our content strategy to drive enrollment and giving, and to shape how a complex institution is understood. We're looking for the person who will set the standard for that work.

Digital Pulp is hiring a Senior Content Strategist to lead our content strategy team and own how the agency approaches messaging, voice, and writing. You'll build the methods the team uses and hold every word that leaves the studio to a high bar. You'll also lead strategy on our most complex brand and website engagements. That means presenting to presidents, CMOs, and advancement leaders, making the case for your recommendations, and getting to decisions you can stand behind. This is a leadership role for someone who still wants to do the work.

The Details

Type: Full-time, salaried.

Location: Remote, with regular overlap with New York business hours. Occasional travel for discovery and client presentations.

Reports to: Chief Creative Officer.

Leads: A team of [X] content strategists and writers, plus freelancers as projects require.

Compensation: $140,000–$175,000, commensurate with experience.

What You'll Own

Setting the Standard

• Define Digital Pulp's content strategy methodology. This covers how we run messaging and voice-and-tone engagements, audits, remapping, and governance, so the quality holds from one project to the next.
• Write and maintain an editorial standard for all client-facing writing, from wireframe copy to strategy documents.
• Build the frameworks the team works from, and revise them as we confront new challenges and shape new solutions?.
• Review content deliverables before they go to clients.

Leading the team

• Hire, mentor, and develop strategists and writers.
• Edit and critique the team's work so that each new draft needs less of your input.
• Staff projects, manage freelance writers, and balance workload across concurrent engagements.

Leading client strategy

• Develop messaging frameworks and voice and tone systems that clients recognize as their own and can put to use right away.
• Work with brand, UX, and design leads on positioning and on how the story shows up across a site.
• Lead discovery sessions, present to senior stakeholders, and train client content teams.

Doing the work

You'll still produce artifacts on key engagements, and you'll teach the team to produce them to the same standard:

• Messaging and voice & tone guides
• Site audits and content analysis
• Content architecture: Work with the UX team on guiding sitemaps, taxonomy direction, and content grouping for large sites
• Wireframe copy: heds, deks, and capsule copy that clarify intent and support UX decisions
• Content remapping plans with component-stacking and storytelling guidance for top-level pages
• Governance strategy that client teams can run
• Sample pages and prototypes

Growing the business

While not at the core of your responsibilities, helping shape approaches for new business pitches will be an important skill.

• Shape pitch narratives and proposal language, and scope and estimate the content portion of new engagements.
• Lead Digital Pulp's thought leadership on higher-ed content strategy, content governance, and content-driven UX.
• Own DP's own voice, including case study narratives, service positioning, and marketing copy.

The Path Ahead

First 90 days

• Learn our clients, team, and current methods, and audit how content strategy work gets done today.
• Take the lead on content strategy for at least one active engagement.
• Publish a first version of the DP content methodology and editorial standard.

6–12 months

• The team's work is consistent in quality without every page crossing your desk.
• Clients see you as a trusted advisor who can build consensus around a story.
• You've shaped at least one winning pitch where content strategy was a deciding factor.
• Content strategy has a clear, repeatable place in how DP scopes and delivers projects.

What You Bring

• 10+ years in content strategy, brand messaging, or editorial strategy, including at least 3 years managing writers or strategists.
• Agency or consultancy experience, including working to budgets and hour estimates.
• A portfolio of messaging and voice and tone systems that clients adopted, along with the page-level guidance that put them into practice.
• Real editing skill. You've made other people's writing better and can explain why your changes work.
• Experience building methods, templates, or standards that a team kept using after you handed them off.
• Strong content architecture instincts for large, content-heavy sites.
• Comfort partnering with UX on wireframes and page flows.
• Confidence presenting to senior stakeholders and defending recommendations with clear rationale.
• Responsible AI fluency. You use AI to speed up synthesis and drafting while protecting accuracy, confidentiality, and client restrictions, and you can set those norms for a team.
• A current view on how content structure affects visibility in AI-powered search and LLM responses, as well as in traditional search.

Nice to Have

• Higher education, research, or nonprofit experience.
• Familiarity with CMS ecosystems and comfort working with engineering leads.
• Accessibility-aware practice (WCAG familiarity).

About Digital Pulp

Digital Pulp has been shaping brands and building digital experiences for higher ed, nonprofits, healthcare and mission-driven organizations since 1996. We believe in our clients’ missions and help them to communicate through brand and content strategy that differentiates. Our visual design inspires and engages while our engineering embraces efficiency and stability.

Our work can be seen across organizations like Princeton, Columbia, USC, NYU, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Georgetown, IEEE, Make-A-Wish America, United Way Worldwide, Colonial Williamsburg, and the State of New Jersey. Our work is bespoke and in-house. No handoffs, no silos, no decks that promise more than the build delivers.

We're a small shop by choice. The people pitching the work are the people doing the work, and the work is better for it.

How to Apply

• Hit the 1-Click Apply button on LinkedIn if you want to “phone it in” on this opportunity.
• If you’re particularly interested, send your resume and a cover letter to design-job@digitalpulp.com with the subject line “Senior Content Strategist – Your Name.”
• The cover letter matters. Tell us why this role and our content-driven UX approach fit how you work.
• Please include a link to relevant work samples — especially wireframe copy and one strategy or synthesis example.