Senior Performance Marketing Specialist

About the role

Brainrider is a marketing and creative agency with teams in various locations including Menlo Park/San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, London, and Toronto. We work with ambitious marketers, in-house creative teams, and internal agencies to fill capability and capacity gaps and enable them to execute their marketing and creative at scale. Collaboration is key, and we operate with adaptability, optimism, and teamwork.

Responsibilities

• Agency Management & Quality Assurance (Primary Focus)
• Serve as the day-to-day point of contact for agency partner(s) managing paid search, video, social, and programmatic campaigns.
• Own rigorous QA of all agency output, including campaign builds, keyword lists, bid strategies, audience targeting, ad copy, tracking/tagging, and budget pacing, before anything goes live.
• Catch and address creative safe zone violations, naming convention breaks, and other issues before launch.
• Maintain a "tight ship" operating cadence, ensuring clean campaign taxonomy, consistent naming, organized folders, and up-to-date documentation.
• Enforce strict naming conventions across campaigns, ad groups, creatives, and UTMs.
• Paid Search and Paid Social Strategy & Oversight (Core Expertise)
• Own the paid search strategy across Google Ads (Search, Shopping, Performance Max), Microsoft Ads, and other SEM platforms.
• Define keyword architecture, match type strategy, bid frameworks, and budget allocation.
• Drive the experimentation roadmap, define what gets tested, hold the agency to rigorous test design, and ensure learnings are documented and actioned.
• Manage and optimize significant monthly budgets with a focus on efficiency metrics (CPA, ROAS, LTV/CAC, payback periods).
• Ensure aggressive growth targets are met.
• Non-Traditional Media Buying & Programmatic (Secondary Focus — 15%)
• Oversee agency execution of programmatic campaigns across DSPs (e.g., The Trade Desk, DV360) including audience targeting, contextual placements, and retargeting.
• Source, negotiate, and manage direct media buys across newsletters, industry publications, trade journals, and niche/specialty developer-focused sites.
• Identify and test emerging channels, evaluating ROI potential of new placements, sponsorships, and partnership opportunities outside core social/search platforms.

Requirements

• 5–8 years of performance marketing experience with deep expertise in SEM/paid search (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, SA360).
• Agency background strongly preferred — experience managing multiple accounts/clients simultaneously and understanding the pace, rigor, and accountability of agency life.
• Meticulous attention to detail that borders on compulsive — ability to catch and address errors before launch.
• Proven ability to manage and QA agency partners, holding external teams accountable, providing direct and specific feedback, and maintaining high standards without micromanaging.
• Track record managing substantial paid media budgets ($+/month) with clear performance outcomes and efficient spend allocation.
• Proactive communicator — default to over-communicating, surfacing issues early, and keeping stakeholders informed without being asked. Ability to bring solutions, not just flags.
• Strong analytical skills (Google Analytics, Looker, Tableau, or similar) — comfortable with data, attribution modeling, and translating performance data into actionable optimization strategies.
• Experience with A/B and multivariate testing methodologies across creative, landing pages, audiences, and bidding strategies.

Qualifications

• Experience marketing to developer or technical audiences (developers, engineers, data scientists).
• Knowledge of MMPs and mobile attribution (Singular, AppsFlyer, Adjust) for app-based campaigns.

Skills

• Deep expertise in SEM/paid search (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, SA360).
• Agency management and QA experience.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Ability to manage and QA agency partners.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Experience with A/B and multivariate testing methodologies.
• Experience marketing to developer or technical audiences.
• Knowledge of MMPs and mobile attribution.

Benefits

Competitive salaries, paid vacation, work from home (WFH) support and set-up assistance, and a wide variety of other great perks!

Pay

$125K-135K

Schedule

Remote, US