Sr. Director of Organic Growth & AI Discovery

Hi, We're Centerfield!

Supercharged customer acquisition. Centerfield delivers outcome-based digital marketing solutions and personalized omnichannel experiences for the world’s leading brands. Powered by our proprietary Dugout platform, Centerfield acquires customers at scale for leading residential service, insurance, e-commerce, and B2B brands. Centerfield’s digital experiences and digital brands, such as Business.com and BroadbandNow.com , reach more than 150 million in-market shoppers annually. Centerfield is headquartered in Silicon Beach and is proud to be recognized by Built in LA as a Best Place to Work in Los Angeles.

The Opportunity...

Centerfield is hiring a Sr. Director, Organic Growth & AI Discovery to scale our AI Discovery business while strengthening organic performance across our digital brands. This is a commercial leadership role for someone who understands search deeply and knows how to turn audience reach, trusted content, and emerging discovery opportunities into a growing business.

You will be accountable for the following:

• Develop and own the strategy for maximizing our brands’ visibility, impact, and rankings in AI search and traditional SERPs.

• Serve as Center of Excellence for AIO, LLMs and SEO. This includes education and evangelism of best practices internally and to external clients.

• Partner with marketing, sales, client services, and product to continually evolve and improve our AIO discovery solutions for brands.

• Evolve and improve best practices for all on-page and off-page tactics for implementation by content and product teams. Develop AI-based tools to improve efficiency and execution.

• Own AIO and SEO reporting and vendor management.

You will lead the Organic Growth and Web Publishing team and work closely with Content, Sales, Corporate Marketing, Product, Engineering, Communications, and our AI & Automation team. We are looking for a hands-on leader who can shape client strategy, diagnose a performance problem, develop the team, and make a clear recommendation to senior leadership, sometimes all in the same day. You have a very strong bias to action; you make calls with imperfect data, and you have no patience for reporting that does not lead to a decision.

How You'll Contribute...

Build the AI Discovery business

• Lead the day-to-day growth of our AI Discovery offering: packaging, pricing recommendations across performance, hybrid, and flat-fee models, forecasting, and performance against revenue and profitability goals.

• Turn search and AI-visibility insights into compelling advertiser strategies and proposals; participate directly in sales conversations and client presentations, and maintain the case-study library Sales uses to close.

• Connect commercial commitments to delivery capacity. Work with Sales and functional leads to agree on scope, economics, timelines, and ownership before commitments are made, so nothing is sold that we cannot deliver.

• Build repeatable delivery and client-reporting practices: signed deals scoped into content and placement work within days of signature, and reporting that shows what was delivered, what changed, and where the next growth opportunity lies.

Lead organic growth across the portfolio

• Set portfolio-wide organic growth strategy, methodology and priorities (SEO, answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization) tied to qualified traffic, conversions and gross profit: what gets created, refreshed, consolidated or retired, and in what order.

• Diagnose organic performance declines and algorithm or AI-platform changes, separate a reporting bug or technical problem from a broader shift, and lead specific recovery plans with accountable owners, built with the Content Leads rather than handed to them.

• Shape the technical search roadmap with Product and Engineering across crawlability, indexation, information architecture, internal linking, structured data, and site templates.

• Run focused tests with Content and Communications to understand how authoritative content, YouTube, social, community participation and earned mentions contribute to discovery.

Make performance clear and actionable

• Own the measurement framework and recurring reporting across organic performance, AI visibility (citations and share of voice), sponsorship results, delivery quality and capacity; distinguish visibility signals from attributable business outcomes.

• Lead weekly operating reviews and substantive monthly reviews by business segment, turning findings into recommendations for Content, Product, Communications and Sales.

• Proactively educate the company on algorithm changes, AI-search developments, tools, results, and emerging opportunities through concise updates and a monthly best-practices session that changes what people do the following week.

Lead the team and the cross-functional work

• Manage and develop the Organic Growth manager and the publishing organization (a Manager, Web Production, two Web Publishers and contractors), building stronger analytical judgment, management capability and accountability for results.

• Align priorities with Content Leads and business leaders before work begins; make tradeoffs explicit and bring a clear, evidence-based point of view when priorities conflict.

• Represent the work with executives, clients, and the industry, including conference sessions and partner conversations on AI search.

Improve publishing operations and automation

• Partner with our AI & Automation team to improve publishing, quality assurance, sponsorship placements and reporting workflows; measure efficiency gains after accounting for rework, and reinvest the time saved.

• Own the Organic Growth budget, tool stack, and vendor relationships, directing investment toward measurable business value and reliable operations.

• Establish clear workflows and quality standards across scoping, publishing, and delivery while protecting editorial credibility and coordinating execution with the teams that own it.

What We're Looking For...

• Commercial ownership. You have built or materially grown a revenue-generating business, product, or service, with personal accountability for results, and you can explain the pricing, economics, decisions, and execution behind that growth. You can hold your own with a sales leader, product director, and a client's CMO.

• Deep search expertise , typically 10+ years in organic growth for a content publisher, affiliate, or lead-generation business, with a record of translating organic growth into business results, including diagnosing technical issues and responding to major performance changes.

• Practical AI-search experience. AEO and GEO experimentation and measurement (Profound or a comparable platform), a working understanding of how AI Overviews and LLM answer engines select their sources, and a clear view of what the evidence can and cannot prove.

• Hands-on analytical judgment. You work directly in Google Search Console, GA4, Looker Studio, crawl tools such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs or Semrush, and AI-visibility platforms; you challenge assumptions and turn data into a decision. You can tell a reporting bug from a ranking loss in hours rather than weeks, and you write remediation plans someone else can execute.

• Technical depth in crawl, indexation, structured data, and CMS platforms such as WordPress, enough to set the roadmap with Engineering and know when a fix is real.

• Team leadership. You have led and developed teams and managers, and you can coordinate specialists across commercial, editorial, product, and technical functions, getting priorities agreed before work starts and holding the line when they change.

• Credibility and communication. Executive-ready narratives, client-facing presence, written recommendations that fit on one page, and the independence to defend a recommendation while staying close to execution.

• Ownership through change. This team is finishing a shift from an SEO function to an organic growth business; you are comfortable leading through ambiguity, and you will complete that shift.

Bonus Points...

• Experience in agency and services businesses, particularly with sponsorship or advertiser-funded programs.

• Experience monetizing organic audiences beyond affiliate revenue through AEO or GEO programs and content partnerships.

• Using AI and automation (for example, n8n, Airtable, Zapier) to make growth, reporting, or publishing workflows more effective across multiple brands.

• Conference speaking or published thinking on AI search.

• Multi-brand experience across verticals such as home services, insurance, senior care, security, e-commerce, or B2B.

Success in This Role Looks Like...

• The AI Discovery program hits its revenue and profitability goals, every signed obligation is delivered on time, and Sales uses a documented intake, pricing, and forecasting methodology on every deal.

• Organic traffic and gross profit are maintained or grown in every major vertical, with AI citation share growing on priority topics.

• Content Leads act on one monthly organic review, and priorities are locked before content starts.

• Routine publishing is largely automated, with time saved measured and reinvested in placements, QA systems, and technical work.

• The team is stronger: for example, a Manager ready to own interpretation, not just reporting.

Life at Centerfield...

• This is a hybrid position, and employees are expected to work in our Playa Vista, CA office every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday

• Competitive salary + semi-annual bonus

• Unlimited PTO – take a break when you need it!

• Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision plans + generous parental leave

• 401(k) company match plan – fully vested on day 1

• Outside patio overlooking Playa Vista + cabanas, firepits & working grills

• Monthly happy hours, catered lunches + daily food trucks

• Award-winning culture & unprecedented team spirit (featured in LA Business Journal & Built In LA)

• Fully stocked kitchens with snacks & drinks

• Breakroom supplied with games, couches, workout equipment + weekly in-office exercise classes hosted by professional instructors (yoga, kickboxing & circuit training)

• Free onsite gym + locker rooms

• Paid charity and volunteer days (local mentor programs, adopt a pet, beach cleanup, etc.)

• Monthly team outings (ball games, casino night, hikes, etc.)

• Career growth – we enjoy promoting from within!
  

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AI & Interview Policy

At Centerfield, we use AI tools internally to support efficiency and fairness in our hiring process, including resume screening and administrative tasks.

Candidates are welcome to use AI tools ethically to prepare for interviews, such as practicing responses or researching questions. However, all responses during the interview process should reflect your own knowledge, experience, and judgment.

The use of AI tools to generate responses during live interviews, technical assessments, or written submissions is not permitted unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Interviews will take place after resumes have been screened for the minimum requirements. Please note that this position is not restricted solely to the responsibilities listed above and that the job scope and responsibilities are subject to change.

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Centerfield Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state or local law.