Senior Director, Paid Search and Partner / Affiliate Marketing

Responsibilities

• Set the multi-year performance marketing strategy and roadmap across GEICO's multi-product portfolio, aligned to acquisition, efficiency, and LTV objectives
• Lead a hybrid performance marketing organization of in-house hands-on-keyboard practitioners and agency groups to allocate, invest, and optimize the performance media budget across paid search, AI paid search, affiliates and aggregators, and lead generation
• Build, develop, and mentor an agile, collaborative, and high-performing team — including the leaders who manage it
• Drive transformative change within the go-to-market approach for acquisition efficiency and LTV improvements
• Own channel strategy and results for paid search and AI paid search, including how GEICO shows up in AI-powered search and answer experiences as consumer discovery shifts
• Own the affiliate, aggregator, and lead generation partner portfolio, including partner selection, commercial terms, lead quality, and cost per acquisition
• Serve as a digital pioneer by recommending new strategies and tactics and optimizing vendor relationships to increase performance and workflow efficiency
• Oversee evergreen performance media budgets across GEICO's portfolio, including channel forecasting and rapid in-market adjustments based on performance insights
• Maintain and closely monitor pacing to forecast at-risk results and go-get opportunities
• Balance messaging and brand-building experiments with steady growth and performance

Requirements

• Experience: 15+ years in digital marketing, including significant time leading performance marketing teams and managing large performance budgets across search, affiliate, and lead generation channels
• Service company context: Background in a conversion-driven service business — financial services, insurance, SaaS, or banking — where the company's success depends on acquiring and retaining customers. Experience in CPG or physical product marketing is not a substitute for this context.
• People leadership: Experience leading leaders and managing a hybrid model of in-house teams and agency partners
• Platform expertise: Technical depth across major ad platform algorithms, ad products, optimization levers, and product roadmaps; expertise across biddable search media and emerging AI-driven search and answer-engine ad experiences, with a working knowledge of affiliate, aggregator, and lead generation partner models and the levers that drive quality and cost per lead
• Data & technology: Well-versed in audience development and activation (1P/2P/3P data), martech and adtech platforms, and analytics solutions (SEM bid management platforms, affiliate and partner tracking platforms, lead management and routing tools); strong understanding of the data privacy landscape
• Measurement: Experience with analytical models such as MMM and a deep understanding of how to use them to forecast spend and inform attribution
• Executive communication: Demonstrated ability to present to senior leadership, manage up on performance reads, develop and position POVs, and incorporate feedback to sharpen strategy
• AI fluency: Hands-on comfort with AI tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot) and AI-driven bidding, targeting, and creative decisioning, with a view on how they should change the way a performance team operates
• Operating range: Ability to manage multiple priorities and resources in a fast-paced, growth-oriented organization while leading the improvement of emerging cross-functional processes

Preferred

• Strong Candidates May Also Have: Insurance or other regulated financial services marketing experience
• Experience managing a multi-product or multi-line portfolio with competing acquisition goals
• A track record of building first-party data and attribution capabilities in partnership with data science
• Experience leading an in-housing effort or restructuring an agency model
• Experience with incrementality testing methods (geo-holdouts, conversion lift) alongside MMM

Benefits

• Great Company: At GEICO, we help our customers through life's twists and turns. Our mission is to protect people when they need it most and we're constantly evolving to stay ahead of their needs. We're an iconic brand that thrives on innovation, exceeding our customers' expectations and enabling our collective success. From day one, you'll take on exciting challenges that help you grow and collaborate with dynamic teams who want to make a positive impact on people's lives.
• Great Careers: We offer a career where you can learn, grow, and thrive through personalized development programs, created with your career — and your potential — in mind. You'll have access to industry leading training, certification, career mentorship and coaching with supportive leaders at all levels.
• Great Culture: We foster an inclusive culture of shared success, rooted in integrity, a bias for action, and a winning mindset. Grounded by our core values, we have an established culture of caring, inclusion, and belonging that values different perspectives.
• Great Rewards: We offer compensation and benefits built to enhance your physical well-being, mental and emotional health, and financial future — including market-competitive compensation, a 401K savings plan vested from day one with a 6% match, performance and recognition-based incentives, tuition assistance, mental healthcare, fertility and adoption assistance, and the GEICO Flex program offering up to four weeks of remote work per year.