Senior Digital Paid Retail Media Manager

Skai; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 95,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Skai is seeking a Senior Digital Paid Retail Media Manager in Chicago. You will own the strategy, performance, and outcomes for a book of enterprise retail media accounts across Amazon, Walmart, and other networks.

You’ll plan, build, and optimise campaigns while providing strategic guidance to clients and internal teams. You will partner with product, sales, and technical teams to drive platform innovation, mentor colleagues, and deliver insights, attribution, and automation that translate data

Qualifications

• Enterprise retail media ownership and strategic execution.
• Hands-on across Amazon & Walmart retail media networks including DSP and search.
• Ability to perform root-cause analysis and relate metrics to business goals.
• Proficiency with generative AI tools to produce analyses and reports.

Responsibilities

• Own strategy, performance and outcomes of assigned enterprise retail media accounts.
• Plan, build and optimise campaigns across major networks with hands-on management.
• Investigate performance issues and provide actionable recommendations.
• Advise on media planning, budget allocation and best practices.
• Lead reviews and support renewals, growth discussions and escalations.
• Develop custom analyses, reports and automations when standard tools fall short.
• Collaborate with product, sales and technical teams to drive platform innovation.

Skills

Enterprise retail media ownership

Amazon & Walmart full stack

Analytics & attribution

Generative AI tools (Claude)

Retail media ecosystem fluency

Strategic consulting

Tools

Claude

Job description

Senior Digital Paid Retail Media Manager

• Expert Services
• Chicago, United States
• Senior
• Full-time

Description

Ready to take your career to the next level?

Skai is looking for the best and the brightest to join our family. We're proud of our industry-leading digital marketing software but we're even prouder of the people behind it. That's where you come in!

The Senior Expert Services Manager is a senior practitioner and strategic advisor for Skai's enterprise retail media clients. You own the strategy, the performance and the outcome of an assigned book of accounts, from planning through hands-on execution, and you are the person clients rely on to make sense of a fragmented and fast-moving retail media landscape.

The role sits where deep channel expertise meets strategic consulting. The work is as much about asking the right question as running the right campaign: understanding what the client's business is actually trying to achieve, getting to the real cause of what the data is showing, and building a plan and a narrative the client can act on.

Working with the Retail Media Expert Services Director, you will serve external clients and act as one of our retail media experts for the region, supporting internal stakeholders and helping shape where Skai's platform goes next.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Own the strategy, performance and outcomes of an assigned book of enterprise retail media accounts
• Plan, build and optimise campaigns hands-on across Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Target, and other retail media networks, including day-to-day management as the account requires it
• Investigate performance issues and opportunities, and bring recommendations clients act on
• Advise senior client stakeholders on media planning, budget allocation across networks, and retail media best practice
• Lead QBRs and strategic reviews, and support the client services team on renewals, growth conversations and escalations
• Build custom analyses, reports and automations where the standard tools and templates fall short
• Serve as the retail media subject matter expert for the region, supporting internal stakeholders across the business
• Mentor less experienced colleagues and contribute to team playbooks and process
• Partner with product development, sales, technical account management and sales engineers to drive platform innovation and capture market opportunity

Position Requirements:

We care more about what you have done than how long you have been doing it, so the requirements below are written as evidence rather than years. Expect to speak to them concretely.

Technical skills, required:

• Enterprise retail media ownership, as the senior owner accountable for strategy through execution rather than delivering someone else's plan.
• Amazon and Walmart, full stack (search and DSP). Hands-on across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect sponsored search and Walmart DSP, plus Vendor Central, Seller Central and the 1P versus 3P distinction.
• AMC beyond the out-of-the-box templates, used to answer questions standard reporting cannot, build custom audiences and analyses (for example incrementality or multi-touch attribution), and change what a client does next.
• Analytical depth. Root-cause analysis rather than surface reporting, and the judgement to tie metrics back to the client's actual business objectives rather than optimising to a dashboard.
• Retail media ecosystem fluency. How retailer economics, onsite, offsite and DSP, 1P and 3P, and shopper marketing fit together, and why a tactic that works on one network fails on another.
• Advanced use of generative AI tools such as Claude to produce your own technical outputs, from reshaping data to reports, automations and custom agents. A software engineering background is not required.

Ways of working, required:

• Strategic translation. Turning ambiguous client goals into strategy, plans and narratives clients can carry to their own leadership, built around Skai's technology and the right partners.
• Stakeholder range. Credible from the analyst running day-to-day to the executive who owns the budget, within the same account.
• Cross-functional operation. Fast-paced, matrixed environments where delivery depends on teams that do not report to you.
• Ownership and follow-through. Takes problems to resolution rather than to the next person, picks up what is unowned, and does the right thing because it is right rather than because it was asked for.

Strongly preferred:

• Breadth across other retail media networks: Instacart, Target and Roundel Media Studio, Criteo, CitrusAd, Epsilon, Kroger Precision Marketing, Amazon Retail Ad Service. Breadth across several matters more to us than depth in any single one.
• Agency-side background. This is the most directly relevant experience for the role, though we welcome strong candidates from the brand, retailer and platform sides.
• Coaching and informal leadership. You have mentored or trained less experienced colleagues, or built playbooks and documentation that outlast your involvement, and you are interested in growing into people management.
• Commercial exposure. Retention and growth of a book of business, QBRs with economic buyers, scoping new work.
• Total commerce context. Familiarity with how retail media sits alongside shopper marketing, trade budgets and joint business planning with retailers.
• Skai, or a comparable retail media or search management platform.
• Collaborating with a global team, both locally and virtually.

Location and travel

• US-based
• Ability to travel up to 10-15%

The salary range for this position is $95,000-110,000. The actual salary amount will vary depending on the applicants experience, skills and abilities as well as internal equity and market data. This position is eligible for additional bonus compensation, full details will be provided during the recruitment process.

More about Us:

The company offers best-of-breed advertising technology on the most impactful, highest-ROI media channels as well as a suite of data-driven insights, planning and measurement solutions to complement and maximize return from our solutions.

Established in 2006, we are a thriving organization, with a unique, vibrant startup culture with an incredible track record of success and an amazing future in sight!

We are hybrid for the long term - with a great home/ office work mix, passionate and diverse team members, and a vibrant company culture.

At Skai we have comprehensive medical coverage, employer match retirement savings and generous paid time off. More importantly, we offer the things that make Skai a great place to develop your potential, both professionally and personally. In addition, you will also receive:

• Dental and vision coverage
• Employee share options program
• Generous paid family leave policy
• Flexible hybrid working model
• Life insurance and short/long term disability
• Professional growth stipend
• Diversity and inclusion programs
• Office commuting benefits
• ClassPass Membership
• Volunteering and community opportunities
• Employee Assistance Program
• Company sponsored employee social events
• Office lunches and fully stocked kitchen

Equal Employment Opportunity:

Skai, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We strongly encourage and seek applications from women, people of color, and bilingual and bicultural individuals, as well as members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. Applicants shall not be discriminated against because of race, religion, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, marital status, or medical condition including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS-related conditions. Also pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we encourage and will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.