Director of Paid Media (Remote, Kitchener)

Blacksmith Agency; Kitchener; Remote; CAD 110,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Blacksmith Agency is seeking a Director of Paid Media to lead the Paid Media department, overseeing PPC and SEO strategy across multiple clients. You will mentor the PPC and SEO strategists and own channel governance, reporting standards, and budget allocation as accounts scale.

You will be client-facing, shape audits and outcomes, and partner with sales to define credible deliverables. Three conversations with a recruiter, founder, and final decision are described in our process.

Qualifications

• 7+ years across paid media and SEO. Owning one channel while sitting beside the other does not count here.
• Strategists or specialists who have reported to you, where their reviews, their development and the decision when someone was not working out were yours. Managing accounts is not this.
• Enough depth in Google Ads, GA4, Search Console, Meta and Microsoft Ads to tell good work from work that merely looks good. That is a lower bar than doing it and a higher bar than reading a report.
• One account you turned around that you can talk through: the metric, the figure before, the figure after, and why the change worked.
• Comfortable being the client-facing owner when an account is underperforming. That call comes to you, not to the strategist.
• Agency experience carrying many accounts at once.

Responsibilities

• Set quality bar and development for the PPC and SEO strategists.
• Define audits and reporting standards for client work.
• Ensure client results across the function and reporting integrity.
• Own escalation when an account is at risk; diagnose and direct the fixer.
• Direct budget allocation as accounts scale.
• Communicate what we can credibly deliver to sales before it's sold.
• Lead the hiring plan for the department and conduct first-round interviews within a quarter.

Skills

Paid media

SEO

Leadership

Account management

Client facing

Tools

Google Ads

GA4

Search Console

Meta Ads

Microsoft Advertising

Job description

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency runs PPC and SEO for clients across multifamily, B2B and technical verticals. As Director of Paid Media you lead that department. The PPC strategist and the SEO strategist report to you and they are the specialists in their channels. Right now nobody owns this function, which is the whole reason this seat is open.

Blacksmith Agency

• Marketing
• Full time
• Remote (USA, Canada or South Africa)

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency runs PPC and SEO for clients across multifamily, B2B and technical verticals. As Director of Paid Media you lead that department. The PPC strategist and the SEO strategist report to you and they are the specialists in their channels. Right now nobody owns this function, which is the whole reason this seat is open.

This is a management seat, not a senior individual contributor one. You will not be building campaigns, and on technical SEO your strategist will know more than you do. That is the arrangement, not a gap. You carry channel strategy and where budget goes as accounts scale. The strategists carry the execution of it, and you carry whether the department delivers.

What You Own

• The PPC strategist and the SEO strategist: their quality bar, their development, their reviews, and the call when someone is not going to get there.
• The standard the work is held to. What a good audit looks like, what gets checked before work leaves the agency, how an account is reported. You write it and you hold two specialists to it.
• Client results across the whole function, including whether our reporting is honest. Nobody here is auditing attribution and GA4 accuracy today.
• The escalation when an account is at risk. You diagnose it, you direct the strategist who fixes it, and you are on the call with the client.
• Channel strategy and where budget goes as accounts scale.
• What we tell sales we can credibly deliver, before it gets sold.
• The hiring plan for the department, and first-round interviews for your own team, within about a quarter.

What You Need

• Strategists or specialists who have reported to you, where their reviews, their development and the decision when someone was not working out were yours. Managing accounts is not this.
• 7+ years across paid media and SEO. Owning one channel while sitting beside the other does not count here.
• Enough depth in Google Ads, GA4, Search Console, Meta and Microsoft Ads to tell good work from work that merely looks good. That is a lower bar than doing it and a higher bar than reading a report.
• One account you turned around that you can talk through: the metric, the figure before, the figure after, and why the change worked. Whose hands were on the keyboard matters far less than whether the diagnosis was yours.
• Comfortable being the client-facing owner when an account is underperforming. That call comes to you, not to the strategist.
• Agency experience carrying many accounts at once.

Please do not apply if

• Nobody has ever reported to you, or you have never owned someone's review or had to performance-manage anyone.
• You have only ever run one channel.
• All of your experience is in-house on a single brand.
• What you actually want is to keep building campaigns yourself. That is not a lesser ambition, it is a different job, and this is not it.

None of these are preferences we bend on. They are how we screen, so applying anyway costs you an hour and gets you a no.

Process

Three conversations, then a decision. A thirty minute screen with our recruiter, a first round with the founder this seat reports to, and a final. No take-home project and no panel interview.