Fantasy

This role is fully remote. Candidates must be based in the United States or Canada. We are Fantasy. For over two decades, we’ve partnered with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Nike, Spotify, and Peacock to build digital products used by billions of people every day. We’re now entering our most ambitious chapter: designing and building the next generation of intelligent experiences, where AI isn’t a chatbox but the orchestrator of truly personal products and brand experiences. Your Role. As a Lead Research Strategist at Fantasy, you will think beyond the ordinary to uncover the signals, trends, and emerging forces shaping the world, and translate them into strategic insight that moves clients forward. This is a role for someone who sees research not as a deliverable, but as a catalyst: a way to reframe how clients understand their customers, their industry, and their future. You will design and lead research programs from end to end, from generative discovery and trends analysis through to concept validation and detailed design, operating with minimal supervision while collaborating closely with cross-functional teams. You will also be among the first to explore and shape Fantasy’s emerging AI-powered research tools and processes, helping define how we work in a new era of intelligent product experiences. What You’ll Do. Research Strategy & Planning - Diagnose undefined or ambiguous problems and define a research approach that can creatively solve for unique challenges. - Lead the design, planning, and execution of research programs that support business goals and best-in-class experiences. - Craft novel research approaches and adaptive plans, including templates and frameworks for future use. Trends, Foresight & Strategic Intelligence - Monitor, synthesize, and translate emerging trends, cultural signals, and market shifts into actionable strategic insight for clients. - Leverage and shape Fantasy’s trends intelligence tool to surface opportunities and inform client strategy and product direction. - Proactively identify and frame new strategic opportunities for clients based on trend analysis and foresight work. Research Execution - Lead projects using a breadth of established qualitative and quantitative methods, while adapting approaches to suit unique project challenges. - Conduct research including in-depth interviews, surveys, and usability assessments. - Leverage AI-powered tools and processes to accelerate research workflows, synthesis, and insight generation and experiment with new approaches as the toolset evolves. Synthesis & Storytelling - Identify significant insights and synthesize them into actionable reports with minimal oversight or revision. - Weave together findings to create compelling human stories through behavioral personas, customer journey maps, insights frameworks, and other strategic artifacts. - Effectively communicate research findings and prioritized recommendations for product management, UX design, marketing, and executive decision makers. Collaboration & Client Partnership - Serve as a trusted insight partner to client teams, proactively anticipating research needs and delivering clear recommendations that guide decision-making. - Partner cross-functionally with designers and strategists to embed insights throughout the creative development process. - Collaborate successfully with teams across clients, building empathy and shared understanding of real customers. Experience and Skills - 7+ years of professional experience in user research, strategic research, or a related insights-driven discipline. - Ability to lead research projects end-to-end with minimal supervision, across multiple workstreams. - Strong expertise in mixed-method research methodologies, with clear judgment on methodology selection. - A genuine curiosity about trends, cultural signals, and foresight, and a track record of translating these into strategic impact. - Experience with or enthusiasm for AI-powered research tools and a comfort level with experimentation and emerging processes. - Proficient in data analysis and synthesis, with the ability to distill complex information into clear, compelling narratives. - Excellent verbal, written, and visual/presentational skills, with the ability to communicate effectively to diverse audiences. - Experience in an agency or innovation environment is a plus. - Our Commitment. Fantasy has been building diverse, inclusive teams since 1999. We believe the range of perspectives in this building is inseparable from the quality of what we ship. Fantasy is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

• Set experiential direction and provide strategic guidance across the full arc of engagements, from ambiguous brief to final delivery, using AI tools to move faster, experiment more boldly, and push the work further. • Define and champion the principles that create great, human-centered products, and ensure teams execute against them with creativity and craft. • Oversee and direct work across complex, large-scale engagements as a hands-on leader with a meticulous eye for detail, ensuring it's realized with exceptional creativity and expert craftsmanship. • Distill complex, sometimes competing inputs, including user research, business strategy, technical constraints, and stakeholder feedback, into a clear design direction you can defend and ship. • Devise product visions, feature sets, and roadmaps that move businesses forward, articulating them through compelling, strategic narratives for clients and collaborators. • Build scalable design systems that combine delight and systematic thinking to deliver consistent, accessible, world-class experiences for global audiences. • Work across disciplines, including product, engineering, research, and strategy, to establish unified experiential approaches that balance user needs with business requirements. • Mentor, manage, and grow a team of UX designers, helping them advance their craft and accelerate their careers. • Spot opportunities to improve design processes and lead the team toward better, smarter ways of working, including defining how AI tools get used, pushing what's possible, and setting a new bar for the practice. • Lead by example, inspiring those around you to think beyond the ordinary and raise the standard of what great design looks like in the age of AI. • Engage directly with client partners, working with them to solve problems, ideate, and create meaningful digital experiences. • Lead client presentations, workshops, and working sessions with clarity, confidence, and a strong point of view, conveying the power and thinking behind your team's solutions. • Build trusted, lasting relationships with clients, becoming a natural go-to for creativity, problem solving, and strategic design thinking. • Own the full end-to-end process, from initial conversations with prospective clients through delivery, growth, and ongoing partnership. • Identify emerging shifts in tools, technology, and practice, and translate them into concrete changes in how the team works.

• Create Human-Device interaction and communication through digital products. • Lead and define principles that foster exceptional, human-centered digital experiences. • Design visually compelling and high-functioning user interfaces for applications, websites, and digital products. • Combine layout thinking with visual detail, delivering clean, cohesive, and system-driven design. • Ensure visual consistency and coherence across products through expert use of Figma and component libraries. • Create and document micro-interactions and UI motion briefs to elevate usability and delight. • Be involved in defining how people interact with AI.

• Build and own the new business strategy, from target identification through contract close. • Develop a rigorous, systematic approach to lead generation that produces a consistent pipeline of qualified, right-fit opportunities. • Open new brand relationships and deepen existing ones. Identify key decision-makers, build trust over time, and earn the right to pitch. • Lead pitches from first brief to final presentation, including team assembly, narrative development, and commercial negotiation. • Maintain accurate pipeline visibility and report regularly to senior leadership. • Work closely with marketing to align outbound and inbound efforts. • Continuously improve the tools, processes, and playbooks that make the growth function sharper over time.

• Lead and contribute to the design process across projects, from concept to delivery • Provide thoughtful design direction and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams • Create human-centered design solutions that are both innovative and practical • Develop and maintain scalable design systems that balance creativity with consistency • Partner with strategy, technology, and client teams to create unified, end-to-end experiences • Present ideas and design rationale clearly to client partners and internal stakeholders • Build trusted relationships with clients through collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving • Contribute to a culture of curiosity, inclusion, and continuous improvement

• Own the design process end-to-end — from ambiguous brief to polished delivery — using AI tools to move faster, experiment more boldly, and push the work further. • Own the craft of interaction design at the highest level — producing polished, best-in-class wireframes for complex flows and large-scale deliverables, with the hands-on depth to drive that work from first frame to final spec. • Distill complex, sometimes competing inputs — user research, business strategy, technical constraints, stakeholder feedback — into a clear design direction that you can defend and ship. • Have hands-on experience with AI design tools — Claude, Midjourney, v0, Cursor, or similar — and genuine curiosity about where they're taking the craft. • Demonstrate a proven ability to develop a strategic POV from a brief — shaping design strategy that moves businesses forward and articulating it through a clear, compelling narrative for clients and collaborators. • Work closely with product, engineering, and clients, not just to align, but to drive a design point of view that balances what users need with what the business requires. • Actively translate research, analytics, stakeholder input, and business constraints into concrete design decisions. • Know what the work demands at each stage, whether that's a flow, a prototype, a systems framework, or a research synthesis, and use the right artifact to move the right conversation forward. • Build scalable design systems built for consistency, accessibility, and the realities of fast-moving products. • Lead client presentations, workshops, and working sessions with clarity, confidence, and a point of view. • Actively identify what's next — in process, in tools, in practice — and bring others along for it.

• Think beyond ordinary to ship world-class products for world-leading organizations • Collaborate with talented teams to create experiences that millions of people not only use — but love • Define a brand new paid consumer service from scratch: membership models, tiered experiences, pricing strategy, service blueprinting, end-to-end service ecosystem design • Client-facing leadership role working directly with VP/GM-level stakeholders • Design how services actually work, the tiers, the touchpoints, the business model underneath

This role is fully remote. Candidates must be able to work North American hours. We are Fantasy. The creative partner behind the world’s biggest digital products, launching the next generation of intelligent experiences. For over two decades, we’ve partnered with industry leaders like Google, Microsoft, Nike, Spotify, and Ford to shape products and services used by billions daily. Your Role. As a Technology Lead at Fantasy, you’ll guide teams of engineers in creating exceptional digital products and experiences. You combine hands-on technical expertise with leadership—architecting, prototyping, and building alongside your team while ensuring high standards across every project. You’ll collaborate closely with designers, strategists, and producers to transform creative ideas into tangible, elegant, and scalable solutions. You’ll also serve as a trusted technology partner for clients, helping define how technology can bring innovation to life and drive meaningful impact. Key Responsibilities • Lead end-to-end technical delivery from discovery through launch, ensuring performance, scalability, and maintainability. • Collaborate with design, strategy, and production teams to define and execute technical direction. • Contribute hands-on through coding, prototyping, architecture, and systems integration. • Review engineering work, provide feedback, and champion best practices in development, testing, and deployment. • Mentor engineers to strengthen technical skills, foster collaboration, and promote a culture of curiosity and inclusion. • Partner with clients to clarify requirements, communicate technical strategies, and translate creative goals into actionable plans.

• Launch digital products and services with world-leading organizations • Craft experiences that people love • Work with forward-thinking organizations

• Lead technology strategy and delivery across client engagements, ensuring high-quality execution from discovery through launch. • Serve as a trusted technology partner to clients, translating business and creative goals into clear, actionable technical solutions. • Partner with design, strategy, and production teams to shape technical direction and ensure technology meaningfully supports the product vision. • Contribute hands-on through prototyping, architecture, and production work—leading by example and pushing creative and technical boundaries. • Define and evolve technical architectures that balance innovation, scalability, performance, and feasibility. • Support pre-sales and scoping efforts by estimating effort, defining technical approaches, and contributing to proposals and client presentations. • Evaluate and explore emerging technologies to inspire experimentation, inform future work, and advance Fantasy’s technical practice. • Represent the technology practice in workshops, pitches, and project reviews, providing clarity, insight, and strategic guidance. • Mentor and collaborate with fellow technologists to promote growth, consistency, and knowledge sharing across teams. • Partner with business development and leadership to identify new opportunities and articulate Fantasy’s technology value proposition.