Director of Performance Marketing

About the role

Blacksmith Agency is a marketing design agency, and we're hiring our first Director of Performance Marketing to own paid and organic search as one department. Our PPC and SEO strategists will report to you. Today nobody owns that function end to end, and that's the gap you close.

This is a management seat, not a senior hands-on role. You're accountable for client results and for making your strategists better at their craft. You'll report to our co-president.

What you'll own

• The department. Lead a team of two to three PPC and SEO strategists. Set priorities, run one-to-ones, and coach each person against a clear standard.
• Quality without doing it all yourself. Build the systems that keep the work good: audit templates, review cadences, spot checks and QA before anything reaches a client.
• Client results. Own performance across paid and organic accounts. Diagnose what's failing, set the plan, and hold the team to the numbers.
• One search funnel. Make paid and organic work together, from brand versus non-brand coverage to feeding search-term data into content.
• Measurement you can trust. Make sure tracking, conversion setup and lead quality hold up before anyone reports a win.
• Hiring. Within your first quarter, run first-round interviews for new PPC and SEO hires and help shape who joins the team.
• Underperformance. Spot gaps early, set expectations and timelines, and see them through.
• Staying ahead. Lead how the team adapts to AI in search, including content built to be cited and tracking AI referral traffic.

What you bring

• You've built and run a team. You've grown a paid or organic search team, made the hiring calls, and can explain what each hire was meant to fix. Managing a budget alone isn't the same thing.
• Real depth in both paid and organic. You've worked in the platforms yourself and led across both channels, not just one with some exposure to the other.
• A track record of turnarounds. You can walk us through an account you fixed, with the diagnosis and the numbers before and after.
• Rigour on data. You question a big result before you believe it, starting with GA4 setup, conversion definitions and lead quality in the CRM.
• Management experience. You've coached someone through underperformance, and exited someone when that was the right call.
• Range. Experience across more than one employer or vertical.
• Stability. At least two years in recent roles. A redundancy or layoff won't count against you.
• Clear communication with clients and with your team, especially when results are under pressure.