Senior Paid Search Manager (SEM)

Job Description

Job Description

Who We Are:

Same Seats. Better Prices.

Among the fastest growing technology companies, TickPick is reshaping the secondary ticket marketplace, putting money back in the wallets of live event-goers. Since inception, we have saved our customers over $55 million in service fees. Our BestPrice Guarantee backs up our promise to deliver better prices than our competition.

For the last five years, TickPick has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 award winner and has landed on lists of Inc. 5000's and Crain's New York Business' Fast 50.

If you are passionate about concerts, sports, or theater, and want to see your skills and experience have a direct impact on a fast growing company, TickPick is the place for you. We are building a lean, high-output engineering team committed to providing the most innovative, transparent, and cost-effective ticket marketplace in the industry.

Who You Are:

We are hiring a Senior Paid Search Manager to own SEM end to end. For at least the first 12 to 18 months you will live in paid search: auditing the account, testing relentlessly, building automation alongside engineering, and scaling our search budget efficiently. This is deep, hands-on channel craft for someone who wants to run the account themselves and shape the tooling around it, and it is scoped to grow with its results.

What you’ll accomplish in your first year

• A fully audited account (structure, assets, settings, and tracking) and the optimization roadmap that comes out of it.
• A disciplined test-and-learn program across major platform capabilities, including AI Max and other Smart Bidding approaches.
• Customer-match-based bidding strategies and incrementality testing that calibrate our targets and attribution.
• AI-driven automation that builds on the work TickPick has already shipped, not a restart.

Responsibilities

Account and optimization

• Own paid search strategy, execution, pacing, and optimization end to end.
• Build and refine campaign structure across brand, non-brand, competitor, event, seasonal, and promotional categories, managing keyword coverage, bids, copy, and targets.
• Manage the account actively, making multiple bidding, budget, and pacing updates per day.
• Run the tactical craft: search-term mining and negative-keyword hygiene, RSA and asset-level creative testing, and Quality Score diagnostics across landing page experience, ad relevance, and expected CTR.
• Plan for seasonality around the sharp, predictable spikes of major on-sales, using seasonality adjustments and data exclusions to keep bidding ahead of demand.

Testing and automation

• Develop advanced bidding frameworks beyond platform defaults (tCPA, tROAS, value-based bidding).
• Build the test-and-learn roadmap for major platform capabilities, including AI Max and other Smart Bidding forms.
• Build or co-build AI and automation tooling for auditing, bid and budget optimization, and reporting, and own AI or ML integration into the channel.

Measurement and partnership

• Optimize against CAC, CPA, ROAS, and LTV, connecting channel results to business outcomes.
• Protect conversion tracking and measurement integrity, including enhanced conversions and value accuracy, since every bidding and budget decision downstream depends on it.
• Run incrementality testing (geo holdouts, brand-search pause tests) to isolate paid’s true contribution and calibrate targets and attribution.
• Monitor competitor activity through Auction Insights and adjust strategy and pacing accordingly.
• Manage budgets and forecasting, supporting business reviews with weekly reads and quarterly reviews.
• Partner with Engineering, Data and Analytics, Creative, Brand, and Lifecycle, and work with web and product on landing page and message-match optimization.

Requirements

• 5 to 8 years in paid search or performance marketing, with your tactical depth intact, whether you rose quickly and stayed close to the craft or are a more senior operator returning to hands-on work.
• Deep tactical mastery of Google Ads (Microsoft Advertising a plus). You build and optimize campaign structure and bidding personally.
• Demonstrated use of AI at a software level. You have built or co-built tools, with a technical partner, a software kit, or on your own, that turn paid-search best practices into automated auditing, bid and budget optimization, and reporting. This is beyond platform-native automation and chat prompting.
• Advanced bidding fluency (tCPA, tROAS, value-based) and budget management against CAC, CPA, ROAS, and LTV.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills, including query-level analysis. SQL and BI tools a plus.

Preferred qualifications

• Broader paid-acquisition experience (paid social, app install). SEM is the focus, but breadth informs how you build and opens future scope.
• Experience with Search Ads 360 or third-party PPC tooling.
• Sports, entertainment, and/or two-sided marketplace experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or the sciences.

Benefits

• A hybrid in-office approach, enabling remote work a portion of each week

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan Contribution (401k, IRA)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Training & Development
• $100 Monthly Stipend to Attend Live Events
• Employee Outings
• Free Lunch & Snacks

The estimated pay range for this role, based in New York City, is $145,000 - $175,000. This role will be eligible to participate in our company’s equity program. Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry, and are one part of many compensation, benefits, and other reward opportunities we provide.

Individual pay rate decisions are based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skill set, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company.

The range above is for the expectations as laid out in the job description. However, we are often open to a wide variety of profiles and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. If that ends up being the case, the updated salary range will be communicated to you as a candidate.

Diversity at TickPick:

At TickPick, we know that diversity of all types, in an environment that pursues equity and inclusion, strengthens our organization’s culture. When our employees are representative of the communities we serve, with diversity in demographics and a broad set of backgrounds, we provide a superior experience for both our customers and our employees. Fostering an open and supportive environment where our employees are empowered and encouraged to bring their whole selves to the table enables TickPick to thrive. The diverse approaches and collaborative problem-solving that result enable us to provide an innovative, nimble, and creative marketplace for our customers and sellers. This belief is central to who we are and what we do, and we are proud of it.

TickPick, LLC is proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status, or any other category protected by law.