Principal Category Strategist

About this role

The role Positioning & Narrative Architecture (PNA) is a net-new function at MongoDB. PNA serves as the company’s system of record for positioning, messaging, and narrative to keep our outreach across the company coherent. The team runs lean, flat, and automates as much as possible using in-house-built agentic tooling for market sensing, content generation, and impact measurement. This role sits in the Narrative & Category Strategy pod and is responsible for company and product positioning coherence, narrative architecture, and governance—the most critical part of PNA’s mandate.

The Principal Category Strategist owns the definition and evolution of MongoDB's category strategy across core data platform, search and retrieval, embedding models, and AI agents by developing positioning that inputs into our in-house-built Positioning-as-Code (PAC) system that automates and scales content generation for Marketing and Sales. This role requires close collaboration with Competitive & Market Intelligence, Product Management, Sales, and executive leadership.

Consequently, the right candidate has superior executive presence, high agency, and low ego. This is a senior IC individual contributor role equivalent to Director that helps set standards for other strategists, independently drive cross-functional alignment, and serves as a key voice in articulating MongoDB’s positioning and messaging strategies. We are looking to speak to candidates who are based in Dublin for our hybrid working model.

What you'll own Category definition and evolution. You will set MongoDB's position within relevant categories and keep it current as the market, competitors, and MongoDB's own product portfolio continue to rapidly evolve. You will own driving alignment with senior leadership by weighing risks, benefits, and tradeoffs to bring clarity to ambiguity. Positioning governance. You will author, curate, and maintain positioning in PAC's durable core layer, and manage the collaboration and approval cycles with senior leadership.

You will also build and run the governance process that keeps the positioning current as quickly as the market moves today. Validation. You will work across teams, leverage data, and spend time with internal and external stakeholders to pressure-test every category claim against the strongest counterargument a competitor, an analyst, or a skeptical customer can make. You will also build and maintain the competitive scans in collaboration with Competitive & Market Intelligence and run persona-based stress tests that keep the category position credible and memorable instead of aspirational.