Senior Manager - Technical SEO

What are we building? Hard Rock Digital is a fiercely focused team working to become the best online sportsbook, casino, and social gaming company in the world. We\'re building a deeply curious team with a passion for learning, operating, and building new products and technologies for millions of consumers. We\'re customer-obsessed - we care about each customer interaction, experience, behavior, and insight, and strive to ensure we\'re always acting authentically. Rooted in the kindred spirits of Hard Rock and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Hard Rock Digital taps a brand known the world over as the leader in gaming, entertainment, and hospitality. We\'re taking that foundation of success and bringing it to the digital space - ready to join us? What\'s the position? The Senior Manager - Technical SEO owns the technical health, crawlability, and indexability of Hard Rock Bet\'s digital properties - the marketing site, the web app, and Hard Rock Digital\'s Sportsbook, Casino, and PMR products across the US and Canada. This is a hands-on, highly technical role: you\'ll be the SEO/GEO team\'s primary technical bridge to Engineering and Product, translating search-visibility requirements into real tickets, specifications, and QA criteria, and owning the escalation path when something breaks Google\'s (or an AI answer engine\'s) ability to see our content. This role exists to close a real, current gap: technical SEO work today happens informally, without a clear internal owner or documented intake process. You\'ll build that process from the ground up while simultaneously carrying a real, active backlog. The ideal candidate is genuinely technical - comfortable reading a HAR export, a production JavaScript bundle, or a raw server log when a crawl tool alone doesn\'t tell the full story - and just as comfortable explaining the business impact of a rendering issue to a non-technical stakeholder. You\'ll need real judgment about when a problem is a technical SEO fix versus a product/legal decision that technical SEO can only inform, not own. Key Responsibilities: Technical SEO Strategy & Site Health: Own crawlability, indexability, canonicalization, structured data, XML sitemaps, redirects, and site architecture across every Hard Rock Bet property - including a JavaScript-heavy, client-side-rendered web application, not just the WordPress-based marketing site. Rendering & JavaScript SEO: Diagnose and resolve indexation issues in single-page applications. Own initiatives like verifying genuine crawler traffic at the edge/CDN layer, evaluating prerendering solutions, and validating - via tools like Google Search Console\'s URL Inspection - how search engines actually render app pages once technical blockers are cleared, rather than assuming a fix works. Crawl Budget & Log File Analysis: Own log file analysis to understand real crawler behavior - Googlebot, Bingbot, and named AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, and similar) - identify crawl-budget waste (e.g., unbounded, parameter-driven URL spaces), and manage robots.txt and crawl-directive changes with the correct sequencing (never disallow an already-indexed URL pattern before it\'s been properly deindexed). International & Multi-Market Technical SEO: Own hreflang implementation and domain architecture across US and Canada properties (and future markets as they launch), including ccTLD strategy, market-specific technical requirements, and coordinating multi-domain reciprocal tagging correctly. Engineering & Product Partnership: Serve as the team\'s primary technical point of contact for Engineering and Product. Own the intake process for technical SEO requests end to end - documentation, prioritization, escalation path - and get looped into feature and release planning early enough to catch issues before launch, not after. AI/GEO Technical Readiness: Ensure page architecture and content are technically accessible to AI crawlers and answer engines. Partner with the team\'s content and GEO leads on what "technically ready for AI visibility" requires in practice, as this space continues to evolve. Market Launch Readiness: Own the technical SEO checklist for new state and market launches, partnering with the SEO Project Manager and Vertical Directors so technical readiness is confirmed before go-live, not discovered after. Monitoring, Auditing & Reporting: Run regular technical audits using tools like Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs or Semrush; report on technical site health as a defined input to the team\'s broader KPI/measurement dashboard, with the same rigor paid channels already get. What are we looking for? 5-8+ years of SEO experience with a strong, demonstrated focus on technical SEO, ideally at a large-scale, multi-market, or highly regulated digital platform. Deep, hands-on understanding of crawlability, rendering, indexing, JavaScript SEO (client-side rendering, server-side rendering, and the tradeoffs between them), canonicalization, redirects, robots.txt/crawl directives, structured data, XML sitemaps, and international hreflang implementation. Real experience diagnosing and fixing indexation issues on JavaScript-heavy or single-page applications - comfortable going a level deeper than a standard crawl report when the crawl report alone doesn\'t explain what\'s happening. Experience with log file analysis to understand crawler behavior at scale, including distinguishing traditional search crawlers from newer AI/LLM crawlers. Proven ability to work directly and effectively with Engineering and Product - translating SEO requirements into clear tickets, specs, and QA checklists, and holding your own in technical conversations about implementation tradeoffs and timelines. Genuine curiosity about the emerging AI/GEO discovery landscape - how AI crawlers and answer engines access, interpret, and represent web content - rather than passing familiarity with the term. Proficiency with core SEO tooling: Google Search Console, Screaming Frog (or equivalent), and Ahrefs or Semrush; comfort working alongside analytics platforms like Amplitude or Segment. Excellent written communication - able to document technical findings and requirements clearly for both engineers and non-technical stakeholders, and to explain why a technical fix matters in terms the business cares about. Experience in iGaming, sports betting, or another highly regulated digital industry is a strong plus, given the compliance-driven technical decisions that shape this work here (e.g., jurisdiction-based content gating, state-specific regulatory requirements). Detail-oriented and comfortable owning ambiguity - this role is being built in real time alongside a growing team, and the ideal candidate will help define the process, not just execute an existing one. What\'s in it for you? We offer our employees more than just competitive compensation. Our team benefits include: Competitive pay and benefits Flexible vacation allowance A hybrid / remote working environment Startup culture backed by a secure, global brand Roster of Uniques We care deeply about every interaction our customers have with us, and trust and empower our staff to own and drive their experience. Our vision for our business and customers is built on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where regardless of background or beliefs you feel able to be authentic and bring all your talent into play. We want to celebrate you being you (we are an equal opportunity employer). Hard Rock Digital