Senior Director, Paid Social

Darkroom•New York, NY

About The Position

Darkroom is hiring an executive leader to head its Paid Social practice. The Senior Director will own the practice’s multi-year strategy, performance, commercial health, and service offering across Darkroom’s client portfolio. The role leads a team of 10+ across Associate Directors, Paid Social Managers, and Specialists, develops the practice’s leadership bench, and sets its organizational design, hiring plans, career paths, and performance standards. The Senior Director reports to the Managing Director of Paid Media and sits on the Paid Media leadership team. The role partners with company leadership on practice growth, planning, budgeting, headcount, and service development, and collaborates with teams including Paid Search, Programmatic, Creative, Analytics, Growth Strategy, and Shadow. It serves as executive sponsor for strategic client relationships, leads high-level client planning and reviews, handles escalations, supports new business, and manages platform relationships. The role also establishes campaign, creative, measurement, and testing standards across a portfolio of 25+ accounts with aggregate monthly spend of $10M to $25M+. It partners with Analytics on measurement and with Shadow’s product team on AI and agentic tools, translating portfolio-wide learnings into repeatable playbooks while remaining close enough to the work to audit accounts and identify issues.

Requirements

10+ years of paid media advertising experience, including at least 8+ years specializing in Paid Social and Meta.
5+ years leading paid social teams, including 3+ years managing managers, and experience leading an organization of 10+ in a fast-paced agency or in-house environment.
Experience building or scaling a paid social practice or department, including organizational design, hiring, processes, and service delivery standards.
Experience owning or directly influencing a practice or department P&L, including revenue, margin, utilization, and pricing.
Track record overseeing paid social portfolios with $10M+ in aggregate monthly spend and personally scaling multiple Meta ad accounts beyond $1M USD per month while maintaining or improving efficiency.
Executive presence with CMOs, founders, and internal leadership, including the ability to build trust, present strategic recommendations, and navigate complex stakeholder dynamics.
Expert-level command of Meta Ads Manager and deep familiarity with TikTok Ads, Pinterest, and emerging social commerce platforms.
Mastery of e-commerce performance metrics, including CPA, CAC, iROAS, nCAC, MER, aMER, CTR, TSR, and Hold Rate, and modern measurement approaches including incrementality testing and media mix modeling.
Expertise in full-funnel creative strategy and building creative testing systems at scale.
Strong background in portfolio-level budget forecasting, spend projection modeling, and data-derived decision-making.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to turn complex data into compelling insights for teams, clients, and leadership.

Responsibilities

Own the multi-year vision, strategy, and performance of the Paid Social practice across platforms, verticals, and service lines.
Partner with the Managing Director of Paid Media on practice OKRs, annual planning, budgeting, and headcount.
Own and report on the practice’s revenue, margin, client retention, account growth, and team utilization.
Shape the paid social service offering, including scopes, pricing inputs, and new service lines.
Lead Paid Social’s contribution to new business, partnering with the Growth team on pitches, audits, and proposals and participating in final-round pitches for key prospects.
Build, lead, and grow a team of 10+ across Associate Directors, Paid Social Managers, and Specialists.
Develop the leadership bench by coaching Associate Directors, growing Specialists into future leaders, and creating succession plans.
Own the practice’s organizational design and hiring plan with Recruiting, including role definition, leveling, and final hiring decisions for leadership roles.
Set career paths, leveling expectations, and performance review processes, and ensure team members have individualized growth plans.
Build a culture of accountability, craft, and candor.
Serve as executive sponsor for strategic Paid Social clients, leading executive business reviews and annual planning with client leaders.
Act as the final escalation point for high-stakes client and performance issues and own retention strategy for at-risk accounts.
Manage key platform relationships with Meta, TikTok, and emerging platforms to secure beta access, support, and early insight.
Represent Darkroom’s paid social perspective at industry events and through content and partner programs.
Partner with Shadow’s product team to shape AI and agentic tools and drive team adoption.
Set campaign architecture, optimization, and testing standards across a portfolio of 25+ accounts with aggregate monthly spend of $10M to $25M+.
Define creative strategy standards, including hooks, formats, messaging hierarchy, testing frameworks, and systems linking creative investment to performance.
Lead the practice’s measurement approach with Analytics, including attribution, incrementality testing, and media mix modeling, and set account KPI standards.
Turn portfolio learnings into repeatable playbooks, audit accounts, identify issues early, and lead by example.