Senior Strategist in Manchester, England at Hoxton

About Hoxton

Hoxton is a client-side workplace partner working across real estate, workplace strategy, workplace environment, and the wider decisions that shape workplace performance.

We're built for clients who want clear thinking, commercial judgement, and delivery that holds up in the real world. We say what we think, we make the call, and we stay close to the work from first conversation through to handover.

This is not a business built on layers, scripts, or politics. It's built on the people who do the work, and we're careful about who we bring in to represent us.

Workplace Partners, Built Different.

What We Are Recruiting For

As a Senior Strategist in our Workplace Advisory team, you'll work directly with clients to shape how workplace and corporate real estate support the way their businesses operate and perform.

You'll help clients connect business strategy, workforce needs and real estate decisions in a way that produces outcomes that are practical, effective and commercially sound. The work spans workplace strategy, corporate real estate, and the organisational change that sits alongside both.

Many of our clients are evolving or rebuilding their approach to workplace and corporate real estate. You'll help define visions and models, and design the practical structures that sit behind them, including operating models, governance frameworks, standards and toolkits.

A key initial focus will be supporting a major client as they evolve their global workplace and corporate real estate strategy, helping leadership teams make informed decisions about portfolio direction, workplace models and future office environments.

You'll work closely with the Principal while engaging directly with senior client teams across business leadership, HR, technology and real estate functions. As we grow, you'll also contribute to how we continue to develop our advisory capability and approach.

What You Will Do

• Work directly with clients to develop strategies that align business goals, real estate decisions and workforce needs.
• Lead discovery work to understand business strategy, organisational priorities, growth plans, ways of working and operational constraints.
• Map current approaches to office and real estate decisions, both formal and informal, and identify the gaps, risks and opportunities that sit underneath them.
• Define the target workplace and real estate vision, guiding principles and success measures.
• Design the operating model for workplace and corporate real estate across roles, processes, governance and tools, joined up from strategy through to delivery.
• Create standard processes and decision frameworks for office search, selection, design, build, renewal, consolidation and disposal.
• Develop practical toolkits, including templates, playbooks, option-appraisal tools, business case models and checklists.
• Define workplace standards and guidelines covering space types, ratios, technology, sustainability, accessibility and brand.
• Run interviews and workshops with clients across business leadership, HR, technology, finance and corporate real estate functions.
• Analyse workplace and portfolio performance, identifying opportunities to improve effectiveness, experience and long-term value.
• Bring advisory insight into portfolio and location decisions, including consolidation, expansion, relocation and long-term space planning.
• Produce clear, client-ready deliverables across the work above.
• Build implementation roadmaps and support the change activity that sits alongside them, including communications, training and handover.
• Work closely with our design, analytics, project and change colleagues to deliver advisory work that holds together.
• Contribute to the continued development of our Workplace Advisory methodologies, tools and intellectual approach.

What You Bring

• 7+ years' experience in workplace strategy, workplace consulting or corporate real estate advisory, gained in a consulting, advisory or corporate real estate environment.
• Experience leading, or playing a significant role in, workplace or corporate real estate strategy engagements, from discovery and analysis through to strategic recommendations.
• A track record designing operating models, governance frameworks, standards or toolkits for workplace and corporate real estate functions, not only producing strategic recommendations.
• A track record supporting portfolio, location or real estate decision making, such as office consolidation, relocation strategy, portfolio optimisation or future workplace planning.
• Exposure to clients where workplace and corporate real estate approaches are evolving or being built from a relatively low maturity baseline, rather than only optimising established portfolios.
• Strong understanding of how business strategy, workplace, real estate, people, technology and culture interact within modern businesses.
• Experience across the office and workplace lifecycle, including strategy and planning, location decisions, design and fit out, moves, renewals and changes in use.
• Experience engaging senior client teams and leadership across business leadership, HR, technology, finance and corporate real estate functions.
• Familiarity with workplace platforms such as booking systems, workplace analytics tools, IWMS or CAFM systems.
• A consulting, professional services or internal advisory background, with experience structuring problems, analysing insight and producing clear, client-ready deliverables.

About You

• Strong strategic thinking, with the ability to connect business goals, workforce needs and workplace decisions.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the confidence to lead workshops and client discussions.
• The ability to translate qualitative and quantitative insight into clear recommendations and practical frameworks.
• The capability to design how workplace and corporate real estate functions should plan, deliver and manage their environments.
• Analytical literacy, including comfort working with headcount data, utilisation insights, financial considerations and employee feedback.
• High quality documentation and presentation skills, producing frameworks, models and standards that clients can adopt.
• Strong client management skills and the ability to build credibility quickly.
• Comfortable working in person from the relevant Hoxton location for this role, alongside clients on site where the work requires it. We don't operate as a remote or hybrid business by default. Time out of the office is shaped by what delivery needs, not by policy.

Nice to Have

• Experience working with global clients and across multiple countries.
• Exposure to high growth or scaling clients where workplace and real estate strategies are evolving rapidly.
• Experience supporting workplace change programmes, communication strategies or employee engagement work.

Why Hoxton

Hoxton isn't a large consultancy with layers of hierarchy and well-worn playbooks. We're building something different.

Joining Hoxton means rolling up your sleeves and helping build a consultancy from the ground up. You'll work closely with senior people, see how the business runs, and play a real part in shaping it.

Your work will go out into the world. Not into a folder.

If you want a predictable environment with rigid structures, Hoxton probably isn't the right place.

If you want a real first chapter, or your next one, with proper responsibility and the chance to build alongside us, you'll feel at home here.

Recruitment and Candidate Notice

Hoxton will never request payment, fees or financial information from applicants at any stage of the recruitment process.

We don't accept unsolicited CVs from recruitment agencies. Any unsolicited CVs submitted through our website, or sent to Hoxton employees or personal email accounts, will be considered the property of Hoxton and may be used in connection with recruitment without any obligation to the submitting agency.

All legitimate recruitment activity for Hoxton is conducted directly by us or through formally engaged recruitment partners.