Search & Discovery Lead (SEO/AEO/GEO)

Job Type

Full-time

Description

Whisker is redefining what it means to live with cats-designing intelligent systems that remove friction, elevate the everyday, and celebrate the quiet brilliance of feline companionship. Today, Litter-Robot leads the category. Tomorrow, an entire ecosystem that expands what's possible for cats and the people who love them. We believe the future is feline. And we're imagining that future today.

We work onsite 4+ days a week, with our team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Juneau, Wisconsin. Our team of 700+ passionate pet people thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the occasional office cameo from a four-legged friend.

Whisker Marketing

We are building the world's first great cat brand. Not simply a marketing function, but an engine of cultural change. Our work elevates cats and cat parents, rewrites the norms of pet culture, and expands the future of the category we created. We do this by operating full-stack-from deep consumer insight to breakthrough brand expression to world-class growth execution. And we're just getting started.

What You'll Do:

This role owns how Whisker is discovered across the modern search ecosystem-spanning traditional search engines, AI-driven answer engines, and emerging discovery surfaces.

Reporting into the Director of Organic Growth (the "Loops" team), this role will operate search as a measurable growth channel-combining technical depth for onsite SEO, content strategy, and systems thinking to increase visibility, capture intent, and feed organic growth loops. Whisker's brands should be showing up everywhere.

This is not just a traditional SEO role as you will oversee how Whisker shows up across all of our organic channels in light of a changing search ecosystem. Candidate is responsible for building a scalable, performance-driven discovery system that drives compounding organic acquisition.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

This list of duties and responsibilities is not all-inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as deemed necessary.

Defines and leads Whisker's search and discovery strategy across Google, YouTube, marketplaces, and AI-powered answer engines
Evolves SEO into a broader "discovery layer"-ensuring visibility wherever customers search, ask, or explore
Identifies and prioritizes high-impact surfaces for both brand and non-brand demand capture
Builds and scales organic search as a performance channel with clear contribution to traffic, conversion, and revenue
Identifies high-intent opportunities and ensures we win across the full demand spectrum-from problem discovery to product consideration
Continuously optimizes for both capture (rank/visibility) and conversion (click ? action)
Owns and influences the technical foundation that enables discoverability at scale (site architecture, crawlability, indexation, structured data, performance)
Builds systems that ensure resilience and rapid detection of issues across domains
Partners with Engineering and Ecom teams to continue to optimize Whisker sites toward search-optimized platforms
Defines how content builds authority, relevance, and coverage across key topics and entities
Partners with content, social, and video teams to ensure all content moves beyond engagement and contributes directly to discovery
Shifts from keyword-centric thinking to intent, entity, and topic ownership
Leads Whisker's approach to AI-native discovery, optimizing for inclusion in generated answers, summaries, and conversational search
Develops strategies for structured content, semantic relevance, and authority signals that influence LLM outputs
Continuously tests and adapts to changes in how AI systems retrieve and present information
Partners with Analytics to define how discovery is measured across fragmented, low-visibility attribution environments
Establishes KPIs that reflect modern search (visibility, share of voice, inclusion in AI answers, downstream conversion)
Builds a test-and-learn system to continuously improve rankings, click-through, and conversion performance
Embeds discovery strategy into product, content, PR, and campaign planning
Ensures every major initiative contributes to search visibility, authority, or demand capture
Acts as the connective tissue between Organic Growth loops and search-driven acquisition
Will perform additional responsibilities when required
Requirements

What You'll Bring :

BA/BS in Marketing, Business, eCommerce, or related field
6+ years of experience in SEO with clear ownership of growth outcomes
Proven ability to drive measurable impact in organic traffic, rankings, and/or revenue
Deep understanding of technical SEO, content strategy, and search algorithms
Experience adapting to or working with AI-driven search (SGE, LLMs, answer engines)
Strong analytical mindset with experience using data to drive decisions and prioritization
Familiarity with modern SEO tools (GSC, GA4, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, etc.) and emerging AI tooling
Systems thinker-able to go beyond tactics to design scalable processes
Comfortable working cross-functionally with engineering, content, product, and analytics teams
Maintains confidentiality of proprietary information
Ability to maintain a professional atmosphere in a fast-paced environment with numerous interactions and interruptions
A high degree of initiative, self-motivation, and ability to motivate others
Ability to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with Team Members and colleagues
Comfortable with office pets (cats, dogs)
Benefits & Purrks:

Join a tenacious, inventive company that empowers team members to chart their own path, lead by grounding decisions in the "why", and has a strong sense of empathy and openness to new perspectives. Be a part of exciting growth, work with incredible people, and create tomorrow's pet products-plus a whole lot of extras. You will also be provided with:

Premium Medical/Dental/Vision insurance
Paid parental leave
Whisker Parents Program
1 day "pawternity" leave for new pet adoption
Pet Insurance Discount
401K match
Flexible spending accounts
Company-paid short-term disability and life insurance
Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
Generous paid time off
14 Paid Holidays
Top of the line equipment
Pet-friendly office
Whisker products and swag
Continuing education Support
On-site gym with Peloton
Referral program

Statement of Inclusivity:

We believe different perspectives make Whisker better and strive to create a place where everyone has equal opportunities to thrive.

Please ensure to regularly check your email spam folder for any communication from Whisker to avoid missing important updates regarding your application status.