Associate Director, Programmatic

About The Role

We are hiring an Associate Director, Programmatic to build and lead Darkroom's programmatic capability inside the Paid Media function. This is a foundational hire, not a standard channel-management role. Today, Darkroom is strongest across Meta and Google. Our next stage requires deeper expertise across Amazon DSP, CTV, OLV, Retail Media Networks, high-impact display, and privacy-safe media environments, and you'll be the person who builds that sub-function from the ground up.

The ideal candidate is a senior programmatic strategist with hands-on experience activating and scaling programmatic media across high-growth brands, someone who knows how to use Amazon DSP, streaming video, OLV, CTV, and broader programmatic channels to create demand, prove incrementality, and connect media investment back to business outcomes. Programmatic is the primary focus of this role, but it's not a full-time channel on every account at every point in time. When programmatic work is light or between test cycles, you'll flex into Paid Social execution across Meta, TikTok, Reddit, and Pinterest, so the role is built for someone who wants deep specialization without losing a holistic, hands-on media skill set.

You'll report to the Managing Director of Paid Media and partner closely with Paid Social, Paid Search, Creative, Growth Strategy, and Analytics.

What We're Building

We're empowering small teams with technology that makes it easier to market and grow businesses. Our current focus is to help consumer brands shift from "workflow automation" to "agent management" within their marketing operations. Shadow is the AI coordination layer, providing shared AI memory, centralized agent control, and model orchestration for marketing teams. The Agency Behind the Product Shadow is built alongside Darkroom, a performance marketing agency that's been operating for 10 years, employs 100+ people, runs 100+ clients at a time, and has worked with over 1,000 consumer brands. The agency is both our proving ground and our first user, which means the programmatic function you build here gets tested against real client budgets and real business outcomes from day one, and feeds directly into Shadow's programmatic backbone.

What You'll Own

• Build Darkroom's programmatic media capability across Amazon DSP, CTV, OLV, RMNs, display, and high-impact media.
• Lead strategy, planning, activation, optimization, and measurement for programmatic campaigns across key client accounts.
• Serve as the internal subject matter expert for Amazon DSP, retail media, streaming video, connected TV, online video, and programmatic buying strategy.
• Develop test plans that connect programmatic investment to business outcomes, not just impressions, reach, or platform-reported conversions.
• Partner with Analytics and Growth Strategy to design incrementality-minded test structures across geo holdouts, matched-market tests, exposure-log measurement, clean rooms, and lift studies.
• Create clear client-facing narratives around the role of programmatic in a broader growth system.
• Evaluate programmatic partners, publishers, DSPs, RMNs, and measurement vendors.
• Establish programmatic best practices, SOPs, QA standards, pacing rules, and reporting expectations.
• Collaborate with Creative to define channel-specific creative requirements across video, display, high-impact, and RMN environments.
• Create case studies that prove programmatic's incremental impact and support future new business.
• Educate the broader Paid Media team on programmatic strategy, terminology, platform capabilities, measurement expectations, and client use cases.
• Help define the long-term roadmap for building a programmatic practice inside Darkroom.
• Work closely with the Shadow product team to enhance Shadow's programmatic backbone.

Must Have

• 6-8+ years of programmatic media experience, preferably in a fast-paced agency or high-growth brand environment.
• Deep experience with Amazon DSP is required.
• Strong experience planning or activating CTV and OLV campaigns.
• Experience with Retail Media Networks and audience-led media environments.
• Hands-on Paid Social media buying experience across at least two of Meta, TikTok, Reddit, or Pinterest, comfortable executing and optimizing campaigns when programmatic priorities allow.
• Ability to build programmatic strategies that connect to business outcomes, incrementality, and budget decisioning.
• Strong understanding of programmatic buying models, inventory quality, audience strategy, frequency management, supply paths, brand safety, and measurement limitations.
• Experience working with streaming video, display, high-impact, contextual, publisher-direct, and DSP-based media.
• Comfort building test plans, media forecasts, budget recommendations, and client-facing measurement readouts.
• Experience partnering with analytics or measurement teams on incrementality testing, lift studies, clean rooms, exposure logs, or MMM inputs.
• Strong client communication skills. You can explain complex programmatic concepts in plain English and make a clear recommendation.
• A high ownership mindset. This is a new function, so you should be excited to build systems, not just inherit them.
• Comfort operating in a remote, fast-moving, high-accountability environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience with MMM, MTA, and strong measurement points of view.
• Ability to not only execute incrementality tests, but to interpret data outputs, translate next steps into media strategy, and get client buy-in.
• Experience managing programmatic and paid social together on the same account, with a point of view on how the two channels should work together in a full-funnel strategy.
• Hands-on experience across the full Paid Social set (Meta, TikTok, Reddit, and Pinterest), rather than just one or two platforms.

Culture Fit

• You're fluent in Amazon DSP, CTV, OLV, and programmatic media, and can explain why programmatic matters beyond reach and impressions.
• You know how to pressure-test whether a channel is actually creating incremental impact.
• You're excited by the idea of being the first dedicated programmatic lead inside a growing Paid Media department, and want to help build the operating system: SOPs, best practices, QA, partner POVs, case studies, internal training.
• You want to help Darkroom expand beyond Meta and Google into a more sophisticated full-funnel media practice.
• You're comfortable moving between deep specialization and hands-on execution. Building a new function some weeks, running paid social campaigns across a broad channel mix the next, without treating either as beneath you.