Sr. Director, Paid Media

Build the paid media practice at an agency built by founders who have done this before.

Remote, US · Full-time · Reports to Adam Edwards, co-founder

Who we are

Aftergrowth is a growth agency for mid-market brands, running digital media, performance creative and SEO & GEO. Our founders, Ken Baker and Adam Edwards, have done this before. They built Metric Theory from a one-bedroom apartment into one of the largest independent performance agencies in the country, won Ad Age’s #1 Best Place to Work along the way, and sold it to S4 Capital in 2020.

We started Aftergrowth because AI changed the job. Platforms now set the bids, pick the audience and write the fortieth headline, and they’re very good at it. But they’ll chase whatever number you hand them, whether or not it grows the business. The edge is in deciding what they learn from, what they aim at and what counts as a win. That’s the work we’re built around, and we’re hiring the people who do the steering.

How we work

• Own Your Outputs. AI can produce the first draft. You own whether it’s right.

• Live in the Frontier. AI takes on more of the execution every quarter, so you’ll keep retiring parts of your own job and turning what works into tools the whole team uses.

• Irreplaceably Human. The idea, the client relationship, the judgment call no model will make for you.

• Scoreboard. We judge the work by client outcomes, not volume.

Why join now

You’ll be one of our key foundational hires. Our first client starts this month, with more coming soon. That means more say in what gets built and how we pitch and deliver, plus a direct line to the two people who make the decisions.

Concretely: weekly working sessions with Adam on growth strategy, a seat next to Ken in new-business pitches, and a real voice in comp and hiring for your own team.

What you’ll own

Paid media at Aftergrowth, end to end. Paid media is where most of our clients’ dollars go, and you’ll set how we spend them. You’ll be the player-coach who builds the practice and does the work while it’s being built.

• Clients. Own the paid media client relationships, from onboarding through QBRs.

• Go-to-market. Shape how we take our paid media offering to market, including how we pitch it.

• Investment philosophy. Build and keep evolving how Aftergrowth allocates budget across channels, sets targets and decides what counts as a win.

• Signal and measurement. Own what the platforms learn from: conversion signals, offline and value data, product feeds. Then design the tests that prove what’s working.

• Tech and tooling. Own the roadmap for our paid media agents and skills, and choose our partners and tech stack.

• Execution. Do the hands-on work across paid search, paid social, streaming TV & audio and ChatGPT Ads for our founding clients.

• Team. Hire, build and lead the paid media team as it grows.

What you bring

• 7+ years in digital performance media, including 3+ years in a client-facing agency role

• Deep hands-on experience building and running acquisition strategy on Google Ads and Meta, plus real reps on at least two of: Microsoft, TikTok, LinkedIn, Amazon, programmatic or CTV

• A strong point of view on measurement (incrementality, MMM, attribution and when to trust each), plus channel budget allocation and what makes ad creative perform

• A track record of building testing roadmaps that produced clear takeaways and moved budget

• Fluency in signal work: conversion APIs, offline conversion imports, value-based bidding and product feeds

• A track record of using AI to automate audits, reporting and feed or signal work, while you own the strategy and testing calls

• Executive presentation skills and experience

• Experience hiring and managing successful teams at an agency

A week in the life

Three months in.

Monday

• Morning: Weekly performance check. One client’s Meta CPA is flat, but new-customer share has dropped. Advantage+ is harvesting people who were going to buy anyway.

• Afternoon: Rework the conversion signal so it passes new vs. returning customer value, and the algorithm starts chasing the customers the business actually needs.

Tuesday

• Morning: Pipeline and staffing huddle with Adam and Ken, then prep next week’s client onboarding. Run our audit agent across their Google, Meta and Microsoft accounts, then cut its 60 findings to the five that matter.

• Afternoon: Final-round interview for a paid social manager, who walks you through their work sample, prompts and all.

Wednesday

• Morning: QBR with a client’s CMO: revenue first, then the readout from last quarter’s YouTube geo-lift test and the budget shift it justifies.

• Afternoon: Sync with the SEO & GEO lead. The prompts where we’re winning AI recommendations become the next ChatGPT Ads tests.

Thursday

• Morning: Feed work for a DTC client. Rewrite product titles and attributes so Shopping and Performance Max stop guessing, and AI answers get cleaner data along the way.

• Afternoon: Build time on a skill that flags pacing and performance anomalies across every account, so you start Monday with a decision list instead of a dashboard.

Friday

• Morning: New-business pitch with Ken. You show a prospect where their media plan is leaving money on the table.

• Afternoon: Ship v1 of your skill and demo it at the team show-and-tell.

Location and travel

Remote, US. We have hubs in San Francisco and San Diego. If you’re near one, great. If not, this role stays remote. Expect to get together in person about once a quarter, plus client and pitch travel as needed.

Compensation

$125,000 – $175,000 base salary, plus a performance-based bonus.

Benefits

• Health and dental

• Vision and a 401(k) through a PEO

• Flexible PTO

• On the roadmap: 401(k) matching, a wellness stipend and more as we grow