How To Become A Senior Strategist: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior strategist and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Senior strategists are responsible for gathering critical data that ensure strategies are well informed and laid out. They write clear and brilliant briefs involving inspiring and informing creative teams. They also research clients to understand them and their objectives while producing inventive ideas with other creative team members.

Senior strategists analyze clients to uncover growth opportunities, as they work closely with account managers to define the clients' goals and drive insights that shape project solutions. They elicit and capture user and business requirements for solution design and implement high-level integrated strategies based on client objectives and target audiences. They also coordinate internal and external resources in implementing research projects.

In terms of academic qualifications, senior strategists mostly hold a bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or other related fields. They are expected to have some years of agency experience or similar roles, such as marketing strategy, planning, etc. Employers mostly require candidates to understand integrated capabilities with exceptional writing, research, and documentation skills.

ScoreSenior StrategistUS Average

Salary

7.7

Avg. Salary $104,996

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 41.51%

male 58.49%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior strategist

Explore senior strategist education requirements

Most common senior strategist degrees

Bachelor's

73.2 %

Master's

20.5 %

Associate

3.2 %

Start to develop specific senior strategist skills

Skills	Percentages
Digital Marketing	13.42%
Client Facing	8.88%
PowerPoint	8.54%
Project Management	8.11%
Client Relationships	4.43%

Complete relevant senior strategist training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior strategists learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior strategist based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior strategist resumes.

Research senior strategist duties and responsibilities

Manage a team of three analysts to successfully execute on clients' Facebook marketing goals.
Create brand messaging, managing marketing media agency to launch company's first paid social PPC efforts.
Manage all top line donation form fundraising strategy including design, copy, naming conventions, redirects and A/B testing.
Assist with the implementation of CRM system.

Get senior strategist experience

Generally, it takes 8-10 years to become a senior strategist. The most common roles before becoming a senior strategist include account executive, strategist team lead and vice president.

Prepare your senior strategist resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior strategist resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior strategist resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable senior strategist resume templates

Build a professional senior strategist resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your senior strategist resume.