SEM Associate Director, Paid Search

SEM Associate Director, Paid Search Activation
Employer: Blend360
Location: Hybrid, 3 days per week in office
Office Locations: Irving, TX or New York City, NY
Pay: Up to $80/hour
Employment Type: W2 Contract (12+ months)
Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship, visa transfer, or C2C
About Blend360
Blend360 is a data, technology, analytics, and digital marketing services company that partners with leading organizations to solve complex business challenges. In this engagement, you will work as part of the Blend360 team supporting our paid search and digital marketing organization.
About the Role Blend360 is seeking an experienced SEM Associate Director, Paid Search Activation to support our U.S. Consumer Cards Paid Media team.
This role will lead enterprise-level paid search execution, operational scale, and campaign delivery across a complex, high-volume SEM environment. You will oversee hands-on execution teams responsible for campaign trafficking, QA, pacing, reporting, and optimization while helping Blend expand automation and AI-driven capabilities across its paid search program.
The ideal candidate brings deep SEM expertise, strong people leadership, experience managing largescale campaign operations, and advanced knowledge of Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and SA360.
Key Responsibilities Lead hands-on execution of SEM campaigns across multiple lines of business from build
through launch and in-flight management.

Manage and develop teams responsible for campaign trafficking, QA, budget pacing, and reporting.

Translate SEM strategy into scalable operational plans and execution frameworks.

Develop and refine workflows, playbooks, SLAs, and operating procedures.

Drive improvements across campaign setup, trafficking, QA, billing, and pacing processes.

Establish and enforce QA frameworks for pre-live and post-live campaign validation.

Partner with Risk, Legal, Compliance, Marketing, Technology, Product, Finance, and other stakeholders.

Monitor execution quality, identify issues, and drive remediation.

Support AI-powered and automated SEM capabilities, including automated bidding, audience expansion, and dynamic creative.

Identify opportunities to use automation, scripts, and platform capabilities to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.

Serve as a subject matter expert across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and SA360.

Apply advanced Google automated bidding strategies, including tCPA, tROAS, budget-based bidding, multi-target portfolio strategies, and shared budgets.

Partner with Data and Engineering teams on tagging, tracking, and scalable execution solutions.

Troubleshoot campaign, platform, and tracking issues.

Partner with Analytics teams on reporting frameworks, dashboards, attribution, and performance tracking.

Monitor campaign performance against KPIs including ROAS, CPA, conversion rates, and

Support relationships with major advertising platforms and vendors.

Required Qualifications 8 to 10 years of paid search / SEM experience, including leadership of campaign delivery teams.

Experience managing SEM execution at scale in complex, high-volume environments.

Experience managing large budgets and multiple campaigns across business lines.

Deep expertise with Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and SA360.

Advanced experience with Google automated bidding and optimization strategies.

Strong understanding of SEM automation and AI-driven capabilities.

Experience with digital analytics, attribution, A/B testing, and performance optimization.

Experience working within regulated environments and familiarity with risk, compliance, and governance.

Strong people leadership and stakeholder management skills.

Ability to manage multiple priorities while maintaining a high level of executional accuracy.

Bachelor's degree or equivalent university degree.

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