Creative Strategist Lead

Why USAA?

At USAA, our mission is to empower our members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice. We seek to be the #1 choice for the military community and their families.

Embrace a fulfilling career at USAA, where our core values – honesty, integrity, loyalty and service – define how we treat each other and our members. Be part of what truly makes us special and impactful.

We are proud to support active-duty military spouses. USAA roles may offer remote or hybrid flexibility for active-duty military spouses consistent with applicable policy and business needs.

The Opportunity

Our Creative Strategist Lead translates business priorities, audience insights, and USAA’s brand strategy into compelling creative strategies that strengthen relevance, deepen trust, and drive growth. Connects the needs of prospective and existing members with distinctive storytelling across channels and the marketing journey. Develops clear, actionable creative briefs that align stakeholders and guide creative development. Partners across Marketing to connect creative decisions to meaningful member and business outcomes while reinforcing USAA’s mission and a unified brand.

We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be in the office 4 days per week. This position can be based in one of the following locations: San Antonio, TX, Plano, TX, Phoenix, AZ, Charlotte, NC, Colorado Springs, CO, and Tampa, FL.

Relocation assistance is not available for this position.

What you'll do:

• Leads creative strategy for complex, high-impact initiatives across audiences, products, and channels, translating business priorities, needs, and the master brand platform into focused creative opportunities.
• Leads the development of creative briefs for complex, high-impact initiatives and establishes the strategic clarity, messaging priorities, and creative guardrails needed to align stakeholders and creative teams.
• Translates USAA’s understanding the military community, the master brand platform, and member needs into distinctive creative briefs and message frameworks that guides work across audiences, products, and channels.
• Resolves competing input from senior and cross-functional stakeholders and secures alignment on essential strategic decisions before creative development. Consolidates feedback and distinguishes necessary changes from preferences to minimize repeated debate and rework.
• Serves as a trusted strategic partner to in-house creative leaders, internal teams, and external agencies throughout development, evaluating major creative directions against the broader strategy and helping teams resolve significant departures from the brief, master brand platform, or intended outcomes.
• Guides creative leaders, internal teams, and agencies throughout development, evaluating major creative directions s against the broader strategy and resolving significant departures from the brief, brand platform, or intended outcomes.
• Synthesizes audience insights, campaign performance, and other available evidence into strategic recommendations that influence creative direction and investment decisions.
• Advances briefing standards, strategic frameworks, and ways of working; coaches colleagues and evaluates emerging practices, including responsible AI use, to improve strategic quality and efficiency.
• Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.

What you have:

• Bachelor's degree; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
• 10+ years of experience in creative strategy, brand strategy, or advertising agency account planning discipline. 
• Demonstrated experience leading creative strategy for complex, integrated marketing initiatives across multiple audiences, products, or channels. 
• Demonstrated ability to frame complex business challenges as creative problems and develop actionable creative briefs and messaging frameworks. 
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders, resolving competing input, and aligning cross-functional teams and agency partners around clear strategic decisions. 
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize audience insights and performance data into clear recommendations that establish creative direction and improve effectiveness.
• Knowledge of brand building, consumer behavior, and channel-specific storytelling across digital, social, video, and other marketing channels. 
• Demonstrated ability to guide strategic work, coach colleagues, and improve practices without direct reporting authority. 

What sets you apart:

• Connect business strategy to creative strategy
  See through complex business, audience and brand challenges to define the creative problem that matters most and establish clear strategic direction.
• Find the insight others miss
  Connect existing audience understanding, cultural context, member needs and business realities to uncover the human tension or truth that can unlock a more distinctive creative idea.
• Have a strong point of view
  Don’t simply facilitate competing perspectives. You bring a clear strategic recommendation, articulates what is right for the brand and the work, and can influence senior stakeholders around why.
• Inspire rather than constrains creative teams
  Provide the strategic clarity, provocation and guardrails that gives creative teams a runway for ideas rather than a checklist for execution.
• Make USAA unmistakably USAA
  Translate the master brand platform and USAA’s understanding of the military community into creative direction that could uniquely come from USAA.
• Raise the strategic bar
  Strengthen the quality of Creative Strategy through guidance, briefing standards and better ways of working.

Compensation range: The salary range for this position is: $127,310 - $243,340.

USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Please do not apply for this role if at any time (now or in the future) you will need immigration support (i.e., H-1B, TN, STEM OPT Training Plans, etc.).

Compensation: USAA has an effective process for assessing market data and establishing ranges to ensure we remain competitive. You are paid within the salary range based on your experience and market data of the position. The actual salary for this role may vary by location.

Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.

The above description reflects the details considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job and should not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be performed in the job.

Benefits: At USAA our employees enjoy best-in-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellness. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, 401(k), pension, life insurance, parental benefits, adoption assistance, paid time off program with paid holidays plus 16 paid volunteer hours, and various wellness programs. Additionally, our career path planning and continuing education assists employees with their professional goals.

For more details on our outstanding benefits, visit our benefits page on USAAjobs.com.

Applications for this position are accepted on an ongoing basis, this posting will remain open until the position is filled. Thus, interested candidates are encouraged to apply the same day they view this posting.

USAA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.