Principal Industry Strategist- Space Force

The Industry Strategist - Principal (Space Force) is a former industry leader that serves as trusted advisors to customers and internal teams, helping CDW anticipate industry needs and deliver differentiated value. Industry strategists are customer-facing experts who help build and maintain relationships with customers and their leaders and help shape CDW’s strategic direction and solutions within a specific industry segment. This role blends deep industry knowledge with technology insight to strengthen customer relationships, drive growth and influence solution development. What You Will Do Customer Relationship Engagement & Advisory • Build and maintain trusted relationships with customer executives, program leaders, operational stakeholders, and technical teams. • Lead strategic discussions that shape customers’ long-term vision, technology posture, and organizational maturity. • Design, present and demonstrate industry aligned strategies, solutions, architectures, and partner technologies. • Participate in onsite meetings, executive briefings, business reviews, and advisory sessions to guide customer decision making. • Influence customer requirements by collaborating across stakeholder groups and helping define solution direction. • Mentor associate and staff level industry strategists in their responsibilities. Sales & Enablement Support • Serve as subject matter expert during customer presentations, sales cycles, solution briefings, and large opportunity pursuits. • Articulate CDW’s value proposition clearly to customers, partners, and sellers. • Build the strategy for training and mentoring CDW sellers on industry trends, competitive insights, solution messaging, and customer engagement strategies. • Support sellers in navigating complex procurement environments and identifying additional opportunities. • Participate in customer webinars, conference calls, and internal enablement activities to drive team readiness. • Shape customer’s board level vision into strategic sales opportunities. Industry Solution Development • Lead the process to translate industry problems into scalable, repeatable solution offerings aligned with CDW’s portfolio. • Partner with engineering, services, product, and logistics teams to design complete solution packages. • Coordinate many technology partners participation, ensuring solutions integrate capabilities that address real industry use cases. • Assist with qualifying and scoping solution opportunities within target accounts. • Support the development of new offerings that incorporate emerging technologies, regulatory needs, and customer demand patterns. Industry Thought Leadership & Strategic Insight • Serve as a recognized industry thought leader within CDW’s strategist organization, guiding how technology can positively impact the segment. Mentor other industry strategists in these efforts. • Monitor emerging trends, regulatory shifts, competitive movements, and technology innovations relevant to the industry. • Evaluate and build the strategy to bring to market new technology approaches to understand their value, the problems they solve, their market potential, and alignment with CDW’s strategic roadmap. • Lead the identification of target markets and high-value account segments where CDW can expand its influence. • Represent CDW at conferences, industry events, briefings, and professional forums to strengthen brand presence and credibility. Industry Briefings Support (as assigned) • Strategist participants represent relevant industry expertise with capacity/availability to actively participate in all sessions and events of the briefing and participates in one or more agenda sessions. • Builds and facilitates one or more sessions/panels. • Acts as an Ambassador to customer attendees. • Supports the role of the Strategist Lead as required. • Strategist Lead represents relevant industry expertise with capacity/availability. • Drive agenda design and thematic development. • Drive attendee recruitment. • Drive partner recruitment. • Drive session content development. • Coordinate session deliverables (e.g., panel materials, meeting participation); enforces partner compliance with event guidelines, etc. • Informs Briefing Committee of status, issues requiring mitigation, etc. What We Expect of You • Bachelor’s degree or 15+ years of experience working in the specific industry or equivalent experience • Excellent customer-facing skills with experience building trusted executive-level relationships. • Understanding and influence on technology trends and solution architecture within the industry. • Experience leading enterprise-wide technology implementations including integration, configuration, troubleshooting, training, and adoption. • Excellent leadership, facilitation, strategic planning, and problem-solving abilities. • Excellent communication, presentation, negotiation, and collaboration skills. • Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and manage multiple priorities. • Experience navigating procurement processes and uncovering new opportunities. • Ability to travel as needed. • Experience as an IT C-Level, or IT Vice President, is a plus. • 5+ years experience as a consultant, is a plus. • Experience leading IT strategy and operations in a regulated, complex ecosystem, is a plus. • 15 or more years’ experience in assessing business drivers and translating them into qualifiable, quantifiable and tactical solutions, is a plus. • Understanding technologies and the challenges of implementing new technologies into a highly regulated and complex technology ecosystem, is a plus. • Industry-relevant or technology-specific certifications, is a plus. • Strong knowledge and understanding of standard industry regulations i.e. FERPA, HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA, is a plus. Pay range: $157,500 - $182,000 depending on experience and skill set Annual bonus target of 43% subject to terms and conditions of plan Benefits overvie