Director of SEO – Agentic Search

Role Overview

• You will own organic search and AI discovery across our brand portfolio.
• You set the vision, the roadmap, and the standards for how we compete in a world where Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode are all becoming primary discovery surfaces.
• The team is small by design.
• One SEO analyst.
• A lean research and editorial group that produces data driven studies and guides.
• Several strategic functions sit intentionally unowned and waiting for you to define.
• AI visibility tracking. Editorial direction. Content pruning. Expert sourcing strategy.
• You decide what to keep, what to retire, and what to build. We are scaling leverage, not headcount.
• This is a strategic, high visibility role.
• You will shape company wide priorities, partner with engineering, data, product, design, and executive leadership, and be the internal authority on where organic discovery is heading and what it takes to win.

Requirements

• Sees around corners. You have been building for where search is going, not where it has been. You followed the AI search shift before it was conventional wisdom and you can articulate, specifically, what it means for a business like ours. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you are still primarily optimizing for the 2020 version of SEO or treat AI search as a future concern.
• Understands external visibility as foundational. You recognize that in the AI era, authority comes from being repeatedly cited and mentioned across external networks. Journalists, creators, review platforms, industry directories, communities. You have built external earned media strategies and understand how to navigate those ecosystems. You see this as core SEO strategy, not bolt on marketing work. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you view SEO as primarily on site optimization or if you see earned media and PR as separate from organic search strategy.
• Understands organic as a revenue driver, not just a traffic channel. You operate with a business mindset. You tie organic initiatives to CAC, acquisition, and revenue impact, not just impressions and clicks. You can speak the language of payback periods, cohort economics, and margin contribution. Organic is foundational to how we grow, and you see your job as compounding revenue value across the entire brand portfolio, not maximizing traffic at any cost. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you are satisfied with organic metrics that don't connect to downstream business outcomes.
• Diagnoses fast, acts faster. You use data to find the signal in the noise, make a call, and move. You are not the person who needs six more weeks of research before forming a hypothesis. You know the difference between analysis that unblocks action and analysis that substitutes for it. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you are known for thorough research that rarely translates into a clear recommendation.
• Builds and elevates teams. You have led at scale before and made the hard talent calls when they were needed. You are also comfortable starting small and building the team you need around you. You develop leaders, not just contributors, and you create an environment where people know what great looks like. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you prefer to inherit a big team rather than build one.
• A company wide evangelist. You don't just own SEO. You sell the vision for it. You can explain the AI Search opportunity to a CFO as clearly as you can explain it to a technical SEO. You influence roadmaps, secure investment, and get cross functional partners excited about organic. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you prefer operating within your lane and leaving the advocacy to others.
• Technically fluent and willing to ship. You can get into the weeds on structured data, crawl budgets, and Core Web Vitals, and you know when to. You also know when to step back and set direction. With a small team, the line between executing and leading blurs. You are comfortable on both sides of it. This is unlikely to be a good fit if you need a big team underneath you to do the work.
• AI native. You use AI tools daily. For research, content, analysis, and workflow acceleration. More importantly, you understand how LLMs and generative AI work well enough to build an AI Search strategy grounded in how these systems actually discover and evaluate content. This is unlikely to be a good fit if your AI knowledge is surface level or limited to using ChatGPT for drafts.

Benefits

• Base salary. $170,000 to $190,000 USD.
• Equity. Organic discovery is foundational to how we grow. The value you create compounds across our entire brand portfolio and every channel downstream. We want you invested in that long term outcome.
• Healthcare. Medical, dental, and vision.
• Fully remote. Work from anywhere in the US.
• Flexible PTO. Focused on outcomes.