Senior operators only.
No junior pods, no account managers reporting from a platform dashboard. Every role below states what you would run, the bar, and who it is explicitly not for.
Senior Paid Search Operator
PerformanceGoogle + Microsoft + Apple. Net revenue, not platform-attributed magic.
- Hands-on management of Search, Shopping, PMax, Demand Gen across Google + Microsoft (+ Apple Search Ads where the engagement covers it)
- Server-side conversion architecture via GTM + CAPI, reconciled to Shopify or Stripe net revenue
- Feed management, Merchant Center hygiene, structured negative-keyword discipline
- Friday change log shipped to client inbox — operator name, change, expected impact
- 5+ years hands-on, $5M+/yr in cumulative spend managed personally — not 'overseen by a team'
- Can articulate why branded ROAS is a lie and design a non-brand efficiency floor
- Has shipped feed work and PMax architecture with brand-exclusion and audience signal — not 'set it and let it run'
- Writes Friday change logs without being asked, in plain English a CFO reads
- Account managers who report from the platform dashboard without reconciling to net revenue
Senior Paid Social Operator
PerformanceMeta + TikTok + LinkedIn. Creative is the lever. Math is the language.
- End-to-end Meta + TikTok account management (+ LinkedIn / Pinterest / Reddit per fit)
- Creative strategy alongside the creative lead — message-market match, format velocity, fatigue diagnosis
- Server-side CAPI / TikTok events, cross-channel deduplication, attribution sanity
- Weekly hypothesis-driven test cadence with kill dates
- 5+ years hands-on, $3M+/yr cumulative Meta + paid-social spend personally managed
- Can write a creative brief and direct UGC / video — not just buy media others made
- Comfortable saying 'this campaign is dead' on Tuesday after a Monday launch
- Has shipped iOS-14-era attribution work and knows where Meta's reported numbers lie
- Buyers who treat creative as 'someone else's job'
Senior Marketplace Operator
PerformanceAmazon + Walmart + DSP / AMC. Retail media as a real channel.
- Hands-on Amazon Sponsored Products, Brands, Display, and Sponsored TV — plus Walmart Connect, Target+, Criteo where in scope
- Amazon DSP + AMC for brands at scale
- Listing optimisation alongside the catalog team — A+ content, listing experiments, BSR diagnostics
- Profitability-first reporting (TACOS, contribution margin) — not just ACOS theatre
- 5+ years deep in Amazon Ads with hands-on DSP / AMC experience
- Has shipped at least one $10M+ GMV Amazon book and survived a Buy Box loss
- Reads contribution margin, not just ACOS
- Writes weekly readouts that include 'this didn't work, here's why'
- Operators who never look outside Sponsored Products
Senior Lifecycle Operator
PerformanceKlaviyo / Customer.io. Deliverability is half the job.
- Klaviyo (DTC) and Customer.io (SaaS) flows, segmentation, and campaign cadence
- Deliverability health: SPF / DKIM / DMARC, sending-IP warmth, suppression hygiene, inbox placement testing
- SMS where in scope (Postscript, Attentive, Klaviyo SMS)
- Lifecycle as a measurable channel, not a brand-warmth nice-to-have
- 5+ years Klaviyo or Customer.io, with shipped flows on at least 3 brands
- Can debug a Postmaster Tools complaint rate and explain DMARC to a CTO
- Has rebuilt a list after a deliverability incident
- Reports on revenue-per-recipient and net new contribution — not opens
- Operators who treat email as 'just blast the list'
Senior SEO + GEO Operator
PerformanceTechnical, content, and AI search citability — one operator, three muscles.
- Full-funnel SEO: technical, on-page, content architecture, link earning
- GEO / AEO: optimisation for AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini citability
- Programmatic SEO at scale where the data supports it
- Schema, llms.txt, structured data discipline
- 5+ years SEO with at least one site grown past 100K monthly organic sessions
- Has shipped programmatic SEO and lived through the de-indexation that follows when it's done lazily
- Reads server logs without complaining
- Has a stance on AI search and can defend it
- Operators who only know on-page checklists
Senior CRO Operator
PerformanceHypotheses with kill dates. Tests that conclude in 14 days.
- Funnel teardowns from ad-click to retention — heatmaps, session replay, behavioural analysis
- Hypothesis-driven A/B tests with statistical sanity, not vanity-stat declarations
- Landing-page architecture work alongside paid + creative leads
- Quarterly experiment readouts: what shipped, what killed, what compounded
- 5+ years CRO with at least 50 shipped tests and a 30%+ kill rate (it's a feature, not a bug)
- Knows when not to test — has a stance on minimum traffic / sample / power
- Can sit between paid, creative, and engineering and translate
- Treats kill dates as binding, not aspirational
- Operators who run tests forever waiting for significance
Senior Brand Strategist
Brand StudioPositioning the paid team can pick up day one.
- Lead brand strategy engagements end-to-end — interviews, segment work, competitive mapping, positioning, narrative, messaging
- Pressure-test strategy against operator output — sample ads, PR angles, sales scripts — before sign-off
- Operator briefings post-handoff: paid, content, sales
- Quarterly checkpoints with retainer clients
- 8+ years in brand strategy, agency or in-house, with shipped strategy work for at least 5 brands
- Can interview a founder, a churned customer, and a salesperson in the same week and translate
- Has rejected your own first draft because it 'wasn't operator-ready' — and means it
- Writes more than decks
- Strategists who deliver in 80-page decks
Senior Identity Director
Brand StudioA system, not a logo. Built to be built inside of.
- Lead identity engagements: logo, type, color, motion, photography direction, components
- Component library design (Figma) + tokenised handoff (CSS variables) so engineering can ship
- Six-application stress-test (web, ad, packaging, deck, OG, app screen) before signing off the system
- Working guidelines doc, not a glossy PDF
- 8+ years in identity, agency or studio, with shipped work for at least 5 brands at category-defining quality
- Designs in motion as well as static — the days of static-only identity are over
- Comfortable handing off tokens to engineers without a redraw
- Has a portfolio that tells you what they refused to ship as much as what they did
- Designers who 'don't do tokens'
Senior Writer / Verbal Identity Lead
Brand StudioVoice that produces a different sentence.
- Lead verbal identity engagements: voice, tone, messaging architecture, tagline development
- Naming sprints in partnership with the brand strategist (linguistic + market screening)
- Long-form editorial direction for retainers
- Voice doc that produces real before/after rewrites — not 'friendly but professional' fluff
- 8+ years writing — agency, in-house brand, or independent — with at least 3 shipped voice systems and a body of long-form to point at
- Comfortable interviewing founders, support reps, and salespeople in the same week
- Can defend a tagline against a six-person founder objection without losing the bet
- Has refused a piece of work for being off-voice — and was right
- Writers who can only write in one voice
Senior Web Design + Build Lead
Brand StudioThe site is the brand's largest piece of collateral. Ship it green on CWV.
- Lead brand-led web engagements end-to-end: IA, component-first design, motion, build, CMS, handoff
- Engineering-quality front-end work in Next.js, Astro, Remix, or Webflow — pick the stack to fit who maintains it after we leave
- Performance budget locked at design — LCP, INP, CLS green at handoff
- 30-day post-launch review on every engagement
- Senior designer with shipped engineering chops, OR senior FE engineer with shipped design chops — both 8+ years
- Has launched at least 5 sites that landed CWV green on production traffic
- Has the discipline to design components before pages
- Reads bundle-size reports without complaining
- Designers who hand off a Figma file and walk
Senior Editorial Lead
Brand StudioContent as an editorial product. Built to compound.
- Lead content + editorial retainers: thesis, calendar, long-form, social, video / podcast direction
- Editor-in-chief role across each engagement — single accountable senior on every piece
- Quarterly brand-layer readouts: share of voice, narrative shift, citation
- Capacity-honest scoping — bi-weekly long-form before weekly fillers
- 8+ years editorial — magazine, B2B media, in-house brand, or agency — with a body of long-form to point at
- Has run a calendar through one full year and not blown it up
- Can edit a junior writer to ship-quality without rewriting from scratch
- Treats engagement metrics as a secondary lens, not the primary one
- Content marketers who think volume is the strategy
Senior AI Engineer / Operator-Tooling Lead
Operator StackThe reason 'AI-native' isn't a marketing claim.
- Build, ship, and maintain the internal Claude Code skills, MCP servers, and operator tooling that make 1 senior do the work of 4
- Direct platform integrations — Google Ads API, Bing Ads SDK, Klaviyo, Triple Whale, Shopify, GA4 — wired into operator workflows
- Internal data layer: SQLite caches, decision log DB, experiments DB, MMM scaffolding
- Automation discipline — anything done twice gets a skill or a script; humans always make the call
- 5+ years senior software engineering with shipped production systems
- Comfortable across Python and TypeScript; familiar with LLM tool-use, MCP, and agentic patterns
- Has built internal tools at a shop where the engineers weren't the customers
- Reads platform API docs as a primary research method, not a fallback
- Engineers who treat marketers like users to be tolerated
Senior Account / Engagement Lead
Operator StackThe PM that makes senior-only delivery actually senior.
- Run client engagements end-to-end — kickoff, weekly cadence, decision log, change log, scope discipline
- Single point of contact for the client, even when senior operators are on the call
- Decision log: every major call logged with rationale to `~/Documents/DecisionLog`
- Defend scope. Senior operators do not run scope creep with you in the room.
- 5+ years agency PM or client-services lead — boutique, not pod factory
- Can read a Looker dashboard and a Klaviyo flow with equal comfort
- Has fired a client when the engagement turned toxic — and was right
- Writes weekly recaps in a way the founder reads in 90 seconds
- PMs who exist to schedule meetings
Operations Lead
BackboneFinance, contracts, hiring ops. The reason the engine doesn't sputter.
- Finance: invoicing, AR, contractor + vendor pay, monthly close, cash forecasting
- Contracts: MSAs, SOWs, NDAs, renewals — straightforward terms, no procurement gauntlet
- Hiring ops: applicant triage, scheduling, contractor onboarding, IP / compliance
- Operating dashboards: utilisation, engagement margin, runway
- 4+ years operations / finance at a service business or boutique agency
- Comfortable with QuickBooks / Xero, contracts, and hiring ops in equal measure
- Has run a 10–30 person services firm's ops solo, OR was the deputy who actually did
- Treats process as a tool, not a religion
- Generalists who haven't lived inside a P&L