Director Led Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Flywheel Motion is what we do. We work with mission-aligned founders and executives to bring their personal and corporate brands to life and grow them. Five phases (Discovery – Strategy – Build – Activation – Performance), run by a director-led team.

The people we work with are doing real work in the world: climate, deep tech, science-led business, founder-led organizations whose ideas should travel further than they currently do. We The Flywheel is the studio behind it. AI is in everything we ship.

The Role

The Brand Strategy Director runs the brand strategy across every Flywheel Motion engagement. You own positioning, messaging architecture, audience strategy, and the editorial spine. You set the direction and directly manage the Editorial Producer and the Brand Visibility Lead, signing off on their output. The engineering track makes the work discoverable.

You're a peer to the founding team, client-facing throughout the engagement, and the senior voice in the room when a CEO, founder, or executive needs their story sharpened. You lead Phases 1-2 (Discovery and Strategic Foundation) and stay involved through Phases 3-5, so editorial integrity holds as the work moves from strategy into shipping.

This is a senior, engagement-paced role, not a fixed weekly quota. Most active directors carry 2–4 engagements at once. We define the objective; you decide how to get there.

What You'll Do

• Run Phase 1 Discovery with founders, executives, and stakeholders. Interrogate assumptions until the value proposition that actually moves the market falls out. Not the one in the pitch deck
• Build the messaging architecture per engagement: positioning statement, audience cuts, proof points, key narratives, talking points
• Develop the storytelling framework that runs through every channel: archetypes, beats, templates for case studies, founder posts, and field reports
• Map the stakeholders per engagement: who needs to be convinced, who needs to be informed, who can be ignored. Translate that into channel priorities for activation
• Direct brand identity work when design is in scope. Set tone, set boundaries, sign off the visual translation of the strategy
• Own narrative accuracy through Phase 4 (Activation). Make sure the Brand Visibility Lead's distribution work doesn't dilute the core message
• Stay involved through Phases 3-5: read content for editorial fidelity, recalibrate positioning when the market shifts, brief the team when the narrative drifts
• Co-own quarterly strategic reviews with the AI-Native Tech & Growth Director: performance, recalibration, next-quarter direction

Who You Are

• You have held senior brand or communications strategy roles where the work was building positioning, not executing campaigns against someone else's positioning
• You can sit across the table from a CEO or founder, reshape how they talk about what they do, and have them leave the room nodding
• You think in narrative systems, not slogans. The work has to hold up across owned, earned, and AI-search surfaces
• You are comfortable directing rather than executing content, identity, and editorial. You set the spec; the team ships it
• You are fluent with AI as a research and ideation tool. You use it to read fifty transcripts in the time your peers read three
• You can translate brand strategy into founder-ready language in real time. Engagements run with English-speaking founders and executives across North America, Europe, and APAC
• You are available during US business hours for client check-ins and discovery interviews (ET / PT overlap)

Experience (Preferred)

• 8+ years in brand strategy, communications strategy, executive positioning, or senior editorial direction
• Demonstrable wins: positioning work that produced measurable category lift, founder visibility, or a category-defining narrative
• Senior agency, in-house leadership, or independent advisory background. The work is similar across those; the orientation toward founder-as-protagonist is what matters
• Experience with mission-driven, science-led, climate, deep-tech, or executive personal-brand verticals is a strong plus
• Comfortable working alongside engineering and AI-native production. You don't need to write the code, but you know what the platform can do

Details

Track Leadership, Brand & Editorial

Hours Engagement-shaped, typically 20-40 hrs/week per active engagement

Compensation Senior contract rate, engagement-based

Duration Ongoing, peer-of-founders relationship

Level 8+ years experience, senior leadership

Working hours Overlap with US business hours required (ET / PT)

Language Very good written + spoken English

Location Los Angeles, USA - Hybrid

Where the Director Sits

The Flywheel Motion engagement model uses a six-role team. The Brand Strategy Director is one of two directors; the other is the AI-Native Tech & Growth Director. Together they bracket the engagement: brand sets the direction; tech and growth make the work ship and compound.

• Brand Strategy Director - positioning, messaging, audience, editorial direction (this role)
• Agentic Engineer - platform features and internal tooling, AI-coding-agent driven