THE ROLE

JOSEPH is looking for a Principal to help lead the strategic work of the firm.

Principals operate close to the decisions that matter. They work directly with founders, executives, and marketing leadership to understand complex situations, determine what is actually driving them, and develop a clear point of view about what should happen next.

The work spans positioning, customer strategy, competitive strategy, and growth strategy. But the mandate is larger than any one discipline:

Bring clarity where the answer is not obvious.

You will be expected to ask difficult questions, challenge comfortable assumptions, uncover what others may have missed, and turn rigorous thinking into recommendations leadership can act on with confidence.

This is not an execution role. You will not be measured by the volume of work produced.

You will be measured by the quality of the decisions your thinking helps make.

THE WORK

Every engagement begins with a question.

Why are we losing relevance? Where should growth come from next? What position can we credibly own? Which customer matters most? What should we stop doing? Where should we compete—and where shouldn't we?

Your responsibility is not to arrive with a predetermined framework. It is to understand the situation deeply enough to determine what question actually needs to be answered.

You will lead engagements from ambiguity to direction: framing the problem, guiding research and analysis, developing strategic alternatives, making choices, and communicating a recommendation with clarity and conviction.

You will work directly with leadership throughout that process.

The objective is not another presentation.

The objective is a better decision.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Lead consequential strategic marketing engagements from question to recommendation.
• Advise founders, executives, and senior marketing leaders.
• Frame complex and ambiguous situations into clear strategic questions.
• Develop strategies across positioning, customers, competition, and growth.
• Direct research into markets, customers, categories, competitors, and emerging opportunities.
• Identify the signals that matter and separate them from the noise.
• Develop hypotheses, test assumptions, and build evidence-based arguments.
• Create strategic alternatives and make clear recommendations between them.
• Challenge client thinking when the evidence demands it.
• Communicate complex ideas with precision, simplicity, and conviction.
• Guide strategists, associates, and research talent contributing to engagements.
• Raise the intellectual standard of the work around you.
• Contribute to the ideas, methods, and perspectives that define JOSEPH.
• Help build the firm—not simply work within it.

THE STANDARD

We are looking for exceptional judgment.

You can enter an unfamiliar situation, understand it quickly, determine what matters, structure the problem, and develop a point of view without waiting for someone else to tell you what to think.

You are deeply curious but relentlessly practical.

Analytical without becoming academic.

Confident without becoming rigid.

You know how to defend a position—and how to abandon one when better evidence emerges.

You understand that information alone is not strategy. Neither is a framework, a workshop, a deck, or a collection of observations.

Strategy requires choice.

And good counsel requires the judgment to know which choice to recommend.

HOW YOU THINK

You ask questions before reaching for answers.

You look for the problem beneath the problem.

You can distinguish what is interesting from what is important.

You are comfortable saying, “We don't know yet,” and disciplined enough to find out.

You can hold competing possibilities in your head without becoming paralyzed by them.

You simplify without oversimplifying.

You write clearly. You speak clearly. You make complex ideas understandable.

And when the evidence changes, your thinking changes with it.

Being right matters more than appearing right.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We are interested in accomplished strategists with meaningful experience in strategy consulting, marketing strategy, brand strategy, corporate strategy, growth strategy, or adjacent advisory disciplines.

You should have experience solving complex strategic problems and presenting recommendations to senior decision-makers.

You should be comfortable leading both the intellectual and client-facing dimensions of an engagement.

Experience matters. Pedigree does not substitute for ability.

We care about the quality of your thinking, the rigor of your work, the clarity of your communication, and the judgment you demonstrate when the answer is uncertain.

We are especially interested in people who have developed a point of view of their own.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

This is not an account-management role.

It is not a campaign-planning role.

It is not a creative-production role.

And it is not a position built around managing an endless stream of deliverables.

JOSEPH works upstream of execution.

Our responsibility is to help leadership understand the problem, make the strategic choices, and establish the direction that execution follows.

You should want to be close to that decision.

WHY JOSEPH

JOSEPH is being built around a simple belief:

The quality of the decision shapes the quality of everything that follows.

We are building a firm where thinking is the product, judgment matters, and people are given meaningful responsibility for consequential work.

You will work close to clients, close to leadership, and close to the questions the firm has been engaged to answer.

There are fewer layers between you and the problem.

Fewer layers between you and the client.

And fewer layers between a strong idea and its ability to influence what happens next.

As JOSEPH grows, you will also have the opportunity to help shape the firm itself—its thinking, standards, methods, culture, and body of work.

You won't simply inherit what has already been built.

You will help build what JOSEPH becomes.

HOW YOU’LL GROW

We believe senior people should continue getting better.

You will encounter unfamiliar industries, difficult questions, incomplete information, competing perspectives, and decisions where there is no obvious answer.

That is the work.

Growth comes from doing it repeatedly—alongside other people who expect rigor, welcome disagreement, and care deeply about reaching the strongest answer.

The ambition is not simply to make you a better consultant.

It is to make you a better thinker and advisor.

COMPENSATION

JOSEPH intends to attract exceptional people and compensate them accordingly.

Compensation for this position will be competitive and commensurate with experience, capabilities, and the scope of responsibility.

Specific compensation and benefits will be discussed during the interview process and reflected in the final offer as applicable.

LOCATION

JOSEPH is based in Orange County, California.

The nature of our work requires close collaboration with firm leadership, colleagues, and clients. Specific working arrangements and expectations will be discussed during the interview process.

ABOUT JOSEPH

JOSEPH is a strategic marketing advisory firm.

We help leadership make the choices that shape positioning, customers, competition, and growth.

We work upstream of execution—where the problem is defined, priorities are established, tradeoffs are made, and direction is determined.

Our job is not to add complexity.

It is to reduce it.

Know Your Move.