Director of SEO and AEO

Overview

Director, Enterprise SEO & Answer Engine Optimization

Employment Type: Full-Time
Department: Marketing & Product Development
Preferred Location: Columbia, Maryland
Additional Locations: Chicago, Illinois or Minneapolis, Minnesota. ***Must live within 50 miles of one of these locations. WIll also consider Columbia, MD
Work Arrangement: Hybrid — 4 days per week in office, WFH Fridays
Base Salary: Approximately $150,000–$170,000
Additional Compensation: 25% annual management incentive and 20% long-term equity incentive

The Opportunity

A large, nationally recognized education organization is seeking an experienced and forward-thinking Director of Enterprise SEO & Answer Engine Optimization to lead its enterprise search and AI-discovery strategy.

This is not a traditional SEO leadership position with AEO added to the title. Answer Engine Optimization is currently one of the organization’s highest strategic priorities, and this leader will be responsible for improving how and when its brands appear, are described, and are cited across large language models and AI-powered discovery platforms.

The Director will oversee AEO and organic search initiatives across five distinct institutions, multiple brands, and several complex audience and program categories. The work extends beyond owned websites to include YouTube, Reddit, review platforms, social channels, earned content, institutional content, and the broader sources that influence AI-generated answers.

The organization has already begun building this capability. Multiple workstreams are active, specialist resources are in place, and executive attention is high. The successful candidate must be prepared to quickly understand the existing work, establish priorities, create greater enterprise-wide consistency, and begin taking meaningful ownership within the first 30 days.

This is a highly visible player-coach role for someone who can create the strategy, lead the organization, develop the team, present results to senior executives, and personally engage in the work when necessary.

What You’ll Own

Enterprise AEO and Search Strategy

• Define and lead the enterprise strategy for Answer Engine Optimization, AI-search visibility, technical SEO, organic discovery, and brand authority.
• Improve the visibility and citation presence of multiple institutional brands across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and other AI-powered search experiences.
• Establish how AEO should operate consistently across five institutions while accounting for different brands, programs, audiences, and organizational priorities.
• Identify the programs, topics, questions, and audience needs that represent the greatest opportunities for AI visibility and organic growth.
• Develop an integrated roadmap that connects owned content, earned content, social channels, YouTube, Reddit, review platforms, technical infrastructure, and external authority signals.
• Balance immediate opportunities with the longer-term development of a scalable enterprise discovery capability.
• Continuously identify what the organization should pursue next as AI-search behavior, platforms, and measurement standards evolve.

AEO Execution and Performance

• Lead strategies designed to increase brand citations, visibility, accuracy, authority, and share of answer within large language models.
• Directly evaluate how brands currently appear in AI-generated answers and identify opportunities to improve the frequency, context, and accuracy of those appearances.
• Develop and operationalize frameworks for content retrieval, entity authority, semantic relevance, structured content, and AI-search readiness.
• Translate AEO insights into prioritized actions across content, video, social, digital products, review platforms, public relations, and external channels.
• Establish repeatable processes for topic discovery, content development, testing, optimization, measurement, and reporting.
• Take personal accountability for results rather than operating solely as an advisor or behind-the-scenes strategist.
• Present performance findings, risks, opportunities, and recommendations directly to executive leadership.

Enterprise Governance and Center of Excellence

• Build an enterprise AEO Center of Excellence that creates consistency across institutional and functional teams.
• Establish governance, standards, processes, templates, measurement frameworks, and operating practices that can scale across the organization.
• Determine which elements of AEO execution should be standardized enterprise-wide and where individual brands require flexibility.
• Coordinate work across five institutions and multiple functional teams without allowing initiatives to become fragmented or duplicated.
• Create clear ownership and accountability across workstreams involving owned content, earned content, social channels, video, reviews, and technical optimization.
• Move the organization from institution-specific SEO execution toward an integrated enterprise discovery model.

Technical SEO and Platform Enablement

• Partner with Product, Engineering, IT, Web, UX, Content, and Analytics teams to embed SEO and AEO requirements into digital platforms and workflows.
• Lead initiatives involving crawlability, indexation, site architecture, internal linking, structured data, schema, page performance, accessibility, and content retrieval.
• Evaluate how AI crawlers and answer engines access, interpret, and use organizational content.
• Guide semantic SEO, entity modeling, taxonomy, structured content, and knowledge-graph-related strategies.
• Identify technical barriers, determine root causes, and work directly with internal teams to drive resolution.
• Influence CMS, platform, and technology decisions that affect discoverability, scalability, and speed to market.
• Remain sufficiently hands-on to review data, evaluate topics, troubleshoot issues, and help move content through production workflows.

Content and Discovery Ecosystem

• Partner with institutional marketing, editorial, faculty, product, social, communications, and brand teams to strengthen topical authority and AI visibility.
• Guide the creation of useful, structured, authoritative content that can perform across traditional search and AI-generated answers.
• Help teams determine what content should be written, updated, distributed, reformatted, or supported by external authority signals.
• Incorporate faculty expertise, institutional knowledge, trusted claims, program information, and authoritative sources into content strategies.
• Expand discovery beyond owned websites by understanding how YouTube, Reddit, review platforms, social content, publishers, and earned media affect AI-generated results.
• Ensure all output remains consistent with established brand standards, approved claims, and institutional guidelines.
• Help functional teams increase efficiency and content output without sacrificing credibility, consistency, or quality.

Executive Leadership and Organizational Influence

• Serve as the senior enterprise authority on AEO, AI-search visibility, and organic discovery.
• Communicate directly with senior executives, including digital, marketing, product, and institutional leadership.
• Present results personally and clearly explain what happened, why it matters, what should change, and what the organization should do next.
• Translate complex and rapidly changing technical concepts into concise business recommendations.
• Respond confidently when executives raise questions about AI-search visibility, emerging results, competitive developments, or new opportunities.
• Build consensus across teams with different priorities, personalities, operating models, and levels of AEO knowledge.
• Evaluate competing ideas, distinguish meaningful opportunities from distractions, and keep teams focused on the initiatives most likely to generate results.
• Lead effectively in an environment where priorities may shift quickly and executive interest is significant.

Team Leadership and Capability Building

• Lead one high-performing full-time SEO/AEO team member, with the opportunity to build the broader team based on business needs.
• Provide strategic direction to specialist contractors and cross-functional contributors supporting the AEO program.
• Assess future capability needs and help determine the appropriate organizational structure, roles, agency support, tools, and resources.
• Develop team members while maintaining high expectations for performance, speed, ownership, and quality.
• Create an environment in which specialists understand not only what work to perform, but how their work contributes to enterprise outcomes.
• Build the function from the top down while preserving and developing the strong internal talent already in place.

Measurement, Reporting, and Accountability

• Own enterprise reporting for AEO, AI-search visibility, and organic performance.
• Define and track metrics such as citation presence, share of answer, brand mentions, answer accuracy, semantic authority, competitive visibility, and referral or assisted-conversion impact.
• Use Profound as a central platform for measurement, content discovery, topic analysis, and program insights.
• Help implement and utilize additional platforms, including Scrunch, to strengthen technical analysis and improve program efficiency.
• Connect AEO and SEO performance to meaningful organizational and business outcomes.
• Personally present performance results to executive stakeholders rather than relying on another leader to represent the work.
• Clearly communicate progress, challenges, test results, resource requirements, risks, and next-step recommendations.
• Maintain accountability for both the strategy and the measurable outcomes it produces.

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Advertising, Information Technology, Business, Communications, or a related field.
• Approximately 8–10 or more years of progressive SEO, organic growth, digital discovery, or related experience.
• Meaningful, hands-on experience developing and implementing AEO, generative search, AI-search visibility, or LLM-discovery strategies.
• Demonstrated results improving how brands appear, are cited, or are represented across AI-powered search experiences.
• Experience presenting AEO, SEO, digital visibility, or organic-growth performance directly to senior executives or C-suite stakeholders.
• Proven accountability for performance—not simply participation in projects or support of another leader’s strategy.
• Experience leading enterprise-scale initiatives across a large organization, complex brand portfolio, or multiple business units.
• Deep knowledge of technical SEO, content optimization, structured data, semantic search, entity authority, analytics, and digital-platform fundamentals.
• Experience working across owned content, earned content, video, social platforms, review sites, and other channels that influence AI-generated discovery.
• Proficiency with AEO and SEO measurement tools, ideally including Profound or comparable AI-visibility platforms.
• Ability to operate effectively within established brand standards, content guidelines, and organizational constraints.
• Experience creating governance models, processes, standards, and scalable Centers of Excellence.
• Proven ability to influence teams across Product, Engineering, Content, Web, Analytics, Social, Brand, Communications, and institutional marketing.
• Experience leading employees, contractors, agencies, vendors, and cross-functional contributors.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to communicate complicated information with clarity, confidence, and sound judgment.

The Profile We Are Seeking

The strongest candidate will be more than a traditional SEO leader who has recently become interested in AEO.

You have already been working directly in AI-powered discovery and can describe substantive initiatives, measurable results, lessons learned, and changes you made based on those results. You understand that although AEO is evolving, businesses have already been affected by it, and organizations must act now rather than wait for perfect standards or certainty.

You are comfortable being held personally accountable for performance. You have presented results directly to senior executives, defended your recommendations, responded to scrutiny, and educated leaders who may have varying levels of technical knowledge.

You are level-headed, balanced, flexible, and highly credible. You can manage a large number of active workstreams without becoming reactive or losing sight of strategic priorities. You know how to build consensus, but you are also prepared to make decisions, establish direction, and respectfully challenge assumptions.

You can move easily between executive strategy and hands-on execution. One moment, you may be presenting enterprise visibility results to a Chief Digital Officer; the next, you may be reviewing topic opportunities, helping troubleshoot a technical issue, or working with a team to move content through the production process.

You are a builder and a pioneer. You can take over work already in motion, create structure where it is needed, and determine what the organization should pursue after the known opportunities have been addressed.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 30 days, you will have developed a strong understanding of the existing AEO program, active workstreams, internal stakeholders, institutional priorities, available data, tools, and team capabilities.

Within the first several months, you will begin taking ownership of the enterprise roadmap, establishing clearer prioritization and governance, strengthening executive reporting, and coordinating execution across institutions and channels.

Over time, success will be reflected in:

• Increased visibility and citation presence across AI-powered search platforms
• More accurate and authoritative representation of the organization’s brands in AI-generated answers
• Clear enterprise standards and repeatable AEO processes
• Stronger coordination across five institutions and multiple functional teams
• Improved ability to connect AEO activity with meaningful business outcomes
• Greater executive understanding of AI discovery performance and opportunity
• A high-performing, scalable AEO Center of Excellence
• A clear pipeline of future opportunities as the discovery ecosystem continues to evolve

Location and Work Environment

The preferred location is Columbia, Maryland or Minneapolis MN where a key member of the existing team is based. Candidates must live within approximately 50 miles of an approved office and be able to work in the office four days per week.

Additional location options may include:

• Chicago, Illinois
• Columbia, MD

This leadership position is also eligible for:

• 25% target annual Management Incentive Program
• 20% long-term incentive delivered through restricted stock units
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life and disability insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Flexible paid time off
• Paid company holidays

Why This Role Matters

AI-powered discovery is changing how people research educational opportunities, evaluate institutions, understand career paths, and make significant decisions.

This Director will have the opportunity to shape how a large portfolio of respected institutional brands is represented across that ecosystem. The work is already visible at the highest levels of the organization, and this leader will have meaningful authority to establish what enterprise AEO should become.

This is an opportunity for a proven AEO leader to inherit meaningful momentum, build a critical enterprise capability, and directly influence the future of digital discovery at scale.
 

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