Director, Paid Media

About the Role

As a Director, Paid Media, you will be responsible for a small portfolio of high-growth consumer brands that have engaged with Darkroom to accelerate their growth. You are one-half hands-on media practitioner, spending your day inside the ad platforms building, launching, and optimizing campaigns, and one-half strategic growth partner, architecting the omnichannel media plan and financial narrative behind it. This is a client-facing position meant for the best and brightest in paid media, capable of moving fluidly between in-platform execution and executive-level strategy.

What you'll do:

• Build, launch, and optimize paid media campaigns directly inside ad platforms (Meta, TikTok, Amazon, Paid Search, programmatic)
• Execute full-funnel programs across prospecting, mid-funnel, retention, and remarketing
• Set up creative tests, audience tests, bid strategies, and structure iterations, and troubleshoot performance issues directly within the platforms
• Own pacing, budget, attribution, and performance troubleshooting end-to-end
• Architect omnichannel acquisition strategies across a portfolio of brands
• Scale media budgets from early-stage spend to $500K-$1M+ per month
• Develop funnel structures, testing roadmaps, and measurement frameworks
• Identify opportunities to increase AOV, MER, LTV, and new customer revenue
• Lead client calls, QBRs, weekly updates, and executive presentations
• Connect performance insights to business outcomes for CMOs and founders, and own client satisfaction and retention across your portfolio
• Partner with Data and Finance to align spend to business goals and project client spend based on performance
• Track CAC, contribution margin, cohort data, and profitability levers
• Read and interpret marketing pro formas for clients and internal stakeholders
• Partner closely with Growth Strategy, Creative Strategy, and Paid Search to ensure cross-channel consistency and coordinated go-to-market execution
• Stay ahead of platform algorithm changes, creative evolution, and attribution shifts, and bring proactive hypotheses and channel recommendations to clients weekly

You should apply if this sounds like you:

• 7+ years of hands-on paid media experience, with deep, personal, in-platform experience in at least one major channel (Meta, TikTok, Paid Search, or Amazon)
• Fluent in campaign structures, bidding, pacing, pixel/event setup, and optimization
• Experienced scaling accounts from under $50K to $500K-$1M+ per month
• Strong understanding of DTC economics (AOV, CVR, MER, CAC, margin, cohorts) and comfortable engaging in discussions around contribution margin and profitability
• Able to build and communicate clear testing frameworks and growth roadmaps
• Confident presenting performance insights to executives, and capable of managing founder or CMO relationships with clarity and calm
• Thrive working with Creative, Data, Retention, and other cross-functional teams, and strong at influencing without direct authority
• You are excited by complex challenges that require innovative media strategies to unlock scale
• You can be flexible, understand shifting client needs, deal with ambiguity, and adapt to the situation
• You thrive in fast-paced, high-accountability environments