Director of SEO & AEO

Single Grain•Los Angeles, CA

4d•$150,000 - $185,000•Remote

About The Position

Single Grain is hiring a Director of SEO & AEO to lead its SEO/AEO team and improve client results. This is a hands-on player-coach role: the director leads and develops the team while building and running workflows, managing client accounts, and working directly with clients. The role owns practice strategy, people development, delivery standards, client outcomes, and consistent service delivery. The director will coach practitioners, make prioritization decisions, and engage directly with clients on high-stakes matters. The role requires practical AI expertise to build, test, and improve workflows, then help the team adopt them effectively. The director will work with Single Brain, the company's agent operating layer, and ClickFlow, its AI content-optimization platform, as search increasingly spans Google and answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The position is remote, with at least four hours of overlap with US time zones. Los Angeles-based candidates are a strong plus. Compensation is $150,000–$185,000 USD base salary per year, depending on experience; senior candidates may exceed the band. Candidates are expected to spend more than three hours per week learning in public on X. The hiring process includes an application, seven short questions sent by email, evidence review, a live working session, a paid time-boxed practical exercise with a live defense, and references. Redacted or recreated examples are welcome for confidential work. Applicants must answer the questions themselves; AI-written answers are disqualified.

Requirements

Experience leading SEO or organic-growth practitioners and improving team performance while remaining hands-on.
Strong judgment across technical SEO, content strategy, analytics, and client prioritization.
Practical AEO experience, with examples of tests, changes, and measurement.
Experience personally building or materially improving AI workflows, including quality checks and failure cases.
Ability to explain how answer engines retrieve and cite sources and which decisions require human judgment.
Ability to explain client results using a baseline, time period, and attribution method, including decisions made when results fell short.
Spend more than three hours per week learning in public on X.
Steady tenure.
Ability to work remotely with at least four hours of US time-zone overlap.

Nice To Haves

Being based in Los Angeles is a strong plus.
Senior candidates may be considered above the stated compensation band.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop the SEO/AEO team through clear expectations, regular coaching, and performance feedback.
Remain hands-on by building and running AI workflows, working on client accounts, and engaging directly with clients.
Own the practice roadmap and help account leads turn client goals into focused plans.
Allocate capacity, resolve delivery risks, and make tradeoffs across accounts.
Own service quality and client confidence; support important strategy conversations and escalations, and partner with client services on retention and appropriate expansion opportunities.
Establish a measurement approach connecting search and answer-engine visibility to qualified demand and business results, while documenting attribution limits.
Turn proven AI workflows into shared operating standards with human review, clear ownership, and accuracy and client-suitability checks.
Make answer-engine visibility measurable by establishing a weekly AI citation tracker across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews that logs citations for clients and competitors.
Work with adjacent delivery teams and leadership to keep commitments realistic, improve delivery efficiency, and identify needed service changes.
Assess the team, client portfolio, and delivery process; establish baselines for results, quality, and capacity; and agree on priority risks, success measures, and ownership.
Introduce regular coaching and portfolio reviews, shared delivery and measurement standards, and focused account improvements with named owners and measurable tests.
Review improvement results, document practices to adopt across the team, and present a prioritized next-quarter plan covering client outcomes, team development, and resources.
Demonstrate leadership and hands-on SEO or organic-growth work, practical AEO testing and measurement, personally built or materially improved AI workflows, and client results with baselines, time periods, and attribution methods.