Executive Director, Discoverability

We are seeking an Executive Director of Discoverability to build and lead an enterprise-wide capability focused on how a large, complex organization is found, understood, and accurately represented across traditional search engines, generative AI platforms, answer engines, social and community channels, review sites, and emerging discovery environments.

This is a highly strategic build role for a leader who understands that discovery is rapidly evolving beyond traditional search. Increasingly, audiences are forming their first impressions through AI-generated answers, third-party sources, community discussions, and aggregated information rather than navigating directly to an organization's website.

The Executive Director will define the strategy, operating model, standards, measurement framework, and capabilities required to improve visibility and accurate representation across this changing ecosystem. The role will combine expertise across SEO, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI visibility, content strategy, structured content and technical search foundations.

This leader will also establish a continuous experimentation and measurement program, translate emerging technology and audience behavior into practical recommendations, and orchestrate a cross-functional network of content, analytics, digital, technology, marketing, communications, and other specialists.

The ideal candidate operates at the intersection of strategy, technology, content, analytics, and organizational leadership and has the ability to create structure in a discipline where standards and best practices are still evolving.

Hybrid - Based in Phoenix, Arizona (open to relocation)

Compensation: $200,000 - $230,000k

Discoverability Strategy & Prioritization

• Define and lead a comprehensive discoverability strategy across traditional search, AI-generated search and answer experiences, emerging platforms, third-party sources, and community environments.


• Identify priority audiences, topics, content areas, and opportunities based on organizational goals and audience behavior.


• Establish standards and recommendations for accurate, consistent representation across search and AI platforms.


• Advise senior leadership on emerging trends, opportunities, risks, tradeoffs, and investment priorities.

AI Search, GEO & Emerging Discovery

• Serve as a subject-matter leader on the rapidly evolving practices shaping discoverability, including SEO, AEO, GEO, generative AI visibility, structured content, and emerging search and discovery behaviors.


• Evaluate how large language models, search engines, answer engines, and other AI systems discover, interpret, synthesize, and cite information.


• Translate changes in algorithms, platforms, technology, and audience behavior into actionable strategies.


• Identify emerging tools, methodologies, and practices that can create a competitive advantage.

Experimentation, Measurement & Optimization

• Design and manage a continuous experimentation and measurement program across search and emerging AI platforms.


• Establish meaningful metrics and measurement frameworks in areas where industry standards may still be developing.


• Turn insights into action by determining which findings are valid, prioritizing changes, and scaling successful practices.


• Develop reporting that gives leadership a clear view of discoverability performance, trends, risks, and opportunities.

Content & Audience Strategy

• Use audience research, search behavior, AI-query trends, and performance data to identify high-value questions and information needs.


• Develop recommendations that improve the clarity, authority, usefulness, and discoverability of content.


• Partner with content teams to reduce unnecessary duplication and strengthen authoritative source content.


• Help ensure information is structured so it can be effectively understood by both human audiences and machine-driven discovery systems.

Technical Discoverability

• Provide strategic direction related to structured data, information architecture, site structure, crawl and index behavior, entity relationships, taxonomy, and other technical foundations of discoverability.


• Partner closely with technology, engineering, digital, analytics, and content teams to translate technical findings into practical improvements.


• Evaluate how information is ingested, interpreted, connected, and surfaced across different discovery platforms.

Third-Party & Community Sources

• Develop a strategy for understanding and improving how the organization is represented across sources outside of its direct control.


• Monitor forums, review platforms, aggregators, social communities, authoritative publications, and other third-party environments that influence search and AI-generated responses.


• Identify inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent representation and develop approaches to improve source-level accuracy and authority.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Orchestration

• Build and lead a cross-functional operating model that creates alignment across teams without requiring all capabilities to sit within one centralized function.


• Establish shared standards, practices, governance, and prioritization mechanisms.


• Convene specialists across content, brand, communications, marketing, analytics, digital, technology, product, and other functions around high-priority initiatives.


• Influence effectively across a complex, matrixed organization and drive coordinated action among teams with different objectives and areas of expertise.

Capability Building

• Build a core team of discoverability specialists and develop broader organizational capability through training, playbooks, standards, documentation, and communities of practice.


• Determine where specialized internal expertise is required versus where agency, freelance, or external partner support adds value.


• Evaluate vendors, platforms, and external recommendations with sufficient technical depth to assess methodology and expected outcomes.


• Create an environment that supports experimentation, rapid learning, calculated risk-taking, and the scaling of successful practices.

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, information science, digital strategy, technology, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.


• Significant progressive experience in search, digital strategy, content strategy, digital marketing, audience strategy, or related disciplines.


• Demonstrated experience operating at a senior leadership level and influencing strategy across a large, complex, or decentralized organization.


• Deep understanding of traditional SEO and the technical foundations that affect search visibility.


• Direct experience with or strong expertise in AI-mediated discovery, generative search, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), or large language model response behavior.


• Strong understanding of structured data, site architecture, crawl and index behavior, entity relationships, taxonomy, information retrieval, and related technical concepts.


• Experience developing content strategy and translating audience behavior and data into actionable content recommendations.


• Experience establishing measurement frameworks, experimentation programs, and performance reporting.


• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence in a highly matrixed environment.


• Executive-level written, verbal, and presentation skills.


• Ability to operate effectively in an emerging discipline where established playbooks, benchmarks, and standards may not yet exist.

Preferred

• Experience building a new function, capability, or center of expertise from the ground up.


• Experience developing organizational standards, governance models, processes, hiring plans, and operating structures.


• Experience leading discoverability, SEO, digital growth, audience acquisition, content strategy, or adjacent capabilities for a major consumer-facing or enterprise brand.


• Experience evaluating and managing specialized agencies, technology platforms, and external partners.


• Strong analytics capability with the ability to define meaningful measurement approaches when established industry benchmarks are limited.


• Demonstrated ability to rapidly learn and apply emerging technology.


• Experience leading and developing multidisciplinary teams.


• Experience working across content, marketing, product, engineering, analytics, communications, or digital experience functions.

What Success Looks Like

The successful leader will create a scalable discoverability capability that enables the organization to better understand where and how audiences are finding information, improve the accuracy and authority of what is surfaced, establish clear standards across teams, and continuously adapt as search and AI-driven discovery evolve.

This is an opportunity for a leader who wants to define the playbook rather than inherit one.