Director of Strategy

About CoLab

At CoLab, we want to help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is a cloud based platform for engineering design review. We make it easy for subject matter experts (SMEs) across your business to access, evaluate, and comment on 2D drawings and 3D models. Our built-in AI peer checker, AutoReview, scans designs for common errors or non-compliance with your standards and guidelines. AutoReview creates markups and comments on your files, in context – just like a human checker.

With CoLab, human SMEs and AI work together to help you make better decisions and improve designs faster. We automatically capture knowledge from across your global business that would otherwise be buried in emails, spreadsheets, slide decks, and unknown locations in Sharepoint or PLM. Then, we make sure every lesson learned and every design guideline is applied exactly when it matters.

Companies like Johnson Controls, Komatsu, Schaeffler, and Polaris have launched products 40% faster, cut BOM costs by 50%, and reduced quality escapes by 15% in 1 year.

About the Role

As Director of Strategy reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), you’ll be both a strategic partner and operational powerhouse. In this role, you’ll be responsible for standing up new functions and initiatives, working heavily cross functionally to make them happen, and solving problems with a strong sense of ownership and urgency. 

This role is equal parts strategy and execution. You’ll help turn vision into concrete plans, ensure alignment across teams, and make sure the right people are working on the right things. You’ll also act as a force multiplier—anticipating bottlenecks, solving problems before they escalate, and helping the CSO focus on the highest-leverage strategic priorities, such as launching CoLab into new markets, standing up new functions, and building out new sales motions.

Our Ideal Candidate

You’re a systems thinker with a bias for action. You thrive in ambiguous environments and can operate comfortably at both the 30,000-foot and 3-foot levels—zooming out to align teams, then diving in to fix what’s broken.

You’ll do well here if:

• You’re an entrepreneurial thinker who can identify and orchestrate the cross-functional building blocks needed to bring complex initiatives to life.
• You’re calm under pressure, and build trusting relationships easily across the organization.
• You can manage up, down, and sideways—and you do it with low ego and high trust.
• You’re comfortable collaborating with and challenging senior leaders (with respect) when something doesn’t add up.

What you’ll do:

• Act as a strategic right-hand to the CSO: manage priorities and ensure follow-through on high-impact initiatives.
• Drive execution on key strategic bets, launch CoLab into new markets, and build new sales motions.
• Oversee operational performance: define KPIs, track outcomes, and streamline workflows to remove friction and improve strategic planning.
• Manage and own cross-functional projects from planning through execution.
• Identify competitive opportunities and provide analysis and options to support faster, better solutions.
• Improve internal communication flow—ensuring that the right conversations happen at the right time with the right context.

Qualifications

• Experience in a strategy, consulting, operations, or similar role.
• Proven ability to manage complex, cross-functional projects in high-growth environments.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• High EQ and the ability to build trust across all levels of the organization.
• Familiarity with SaaS, B2B, or product-led companies is a bonus.