Answer Engine Optimization Manager

Description Answer Engine Optimization Manager is a strategic, hands-on role within Citizens' Digital Content & Experience Strategy organization. This role is responsible for building and operating Citizens' Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Center of Excellence, defining how the brand is discovered, interpreted, and represented across AI-driven search and answer environments. As search evolves from links and clicks to answers, citations, and AI-mediated trust, this role focuses on increasing Citizens' visibility, accuracy, and authority across answer engines such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and emerging platforms, especially across top- and mid-funnel journeys. Operating at the intersection of search intelligence, AI discovery, content structure, and governance, this role translates rapidly evolving search dynamics into practical standards, playbooks, and insights that cross-functional can consistently apply. This role partners deeply with Content Strategy, SEO, Social Media, Web Strategy, Brand, PR, Digital Media, Paid Search, Analytics, Product, Technology, Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to shape how Citizens' knowledge (expertise, product details, and thought leadership) is structured, governed, measured, and surfaced. Success is measured by trusted visibility, competitive share of answers, accuracy, and clear influence on customer confidence and business outcomes. The ideal candidate is both strategic and hands‑on: a builder who can set vision, define strategy, influence senior stakeholders, and translate rapidly evolving search and AI dynamics into scalable practices, standards, and measurable results. Key Responsibilities Answer Engine & AI Discovery Strategy * Lead the evolution of Citizens' search practice from traffic‑driven SEO to AEO, focused on visibility, authority, and trust across answer engines. * Develop, operationalize, and scale Citizens' enterprise AEO strategy and roadmap aligned with business priorities. * Educate stakeholders on how to increase Citizens' visibility, and measure the quality of traffic sourced from answer engine * Earn cross-functional buy-in, evangelize and implement content and technical AEO best practices. * Analyze how customers encounter Citizens and competitors across answer engines (e.g., Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Meta AI, etc.) and translate insights into actionable strategy. * Develop strong operating routines and drive cross‑functional alignment, goal‑setting, cohesive execution, and shared accountability across partner teams. * Monitor shifts in search behavior, bot activity, AI answer formats, algorithm updates, and system access patterns to identify risk and opportunity. * Synthesize insights into clear, executive‑ready narratives that inform content, product, brand, PR, and experience decisions. Measurement & Search Intelligence * Define and lead next‑generation AEO measurement frameworks that connect: * Visibility: citations, mentions, share of answers * Authority: entity strength and topic‑level ownership * Impact: customer confidence, engagement, and downstream business influence (leads, applications, and product consideration including measuring citation and mention share as well as sentiment) * Build and maintain dashboards that translate complex discovery data into clear insights for senior leaders. * Evangelize actionable insights flowing constantly across content marketing, web development, paid search, social media marketing, PR, and brand marketing. Content Knowledge & Architecture * Drive cross‑functional alignment to structure Citizens content as authoritative, machine‑readable knowledge that is clear for humans and interpretable by answer engines, in partnership with marketing and technology teams. * Support development of answer‑based content models, including: * Definitions, FAQs, comparisons, and decision support * Explicit attribution, sourcing, and disclosures * Modular content designed for reliable reuse in AI‑powered experiences *