Head of AI Ads
- Role
- Marketing
- Experience
- C-Level
- Employment
- Full-time
- Company size
- Startup
Open to US only. Set where you work from to check your eligibility.
No BS summary
Performance marketing/growth leader with 6+ years in high-growth startups, SEM/paid media, auction mechanics, bidding, targeting, and attribution. Must be strong in AI-native discovery, LLM/search landscapes, quantitative experimentation, and building a new product/practice from 0 to 1.
About AirOps
AirOps is the full-service platform for brand growth in the age of AI search. As consumers shift from traditional search engines to platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the entire ruleset of growth is being rewritten. Buyers now rely on agents to discover, recommend, and purchase products and services for them. If your brand isn't part of the answer, you aren't in the running.
Our platform offers everything a brand needs to get found, recommended, and earn trust. We work with category leaders, including teams at Ramp, Chime, Airbnb, ServiceNow, and Rippling, to drive visibility and accelerate growth from AI search.
Backed by Greylock, Unusual Ventures, Wing VC, and Founder Collective, we're headquartered in San Francisco, New York, and Montevideo.
The Role
We are hiring a Head of AI Ads to define, invent, and lead this emerging new product line. You will be AirOps’ principal authority on generative ads, building the foundational playbooks for how the world's top brands deploy capital across LLM-driven discovery channels. Equal parts category-defining strategist, growth systems engineer, and 0 to 1 operator, you will sit at the tip of the spear: converting early market signals into scalable product motions and teaching the industry how to win in the post-search era.
If you are a high-level performance marketing leader, growth operator, or founder who is eager to invent the future of digital advertising from scratch, this is your platform.
What you’ll do
- Category Blueprint & Strategy: Define AirOps’ playbook for AI-native advertising, creating the definitive frameworks for budget allocation, paid placements, organic authority, and content optimization across LLM platforms.
- Customer Growth Architecture: Partner directly with marketing executives and growth teams to map out early-adopter strategies, evaluating channel tradeoffs, testing mechanisms, and full-funnel ROI.
- 0-to-1 Experimentation Engine: Design and execute high-velocity quantitative experiments across emerging AI platforms to decode auction dynamics, recommendation algorithms, conversion triggers, and attribution models.
- Paid & Organic Convergence: Bridge the gap between performance marketing and AI Engine Optimization (AEO), guiding brands on when to leverage structured data, authority-building, or direct paid placements.
- Industry Thought Leadership: Serve as the public face and key voice of AirOps in the AI Ads ecosystem: publishing insights, educating executive buyers, and shaping market perception around the future of discovery.
- Product & Practice Building: Translate front-line customer learnings and experimental results into repeatable product specs and scalable go-to-market service motions.
What you bring
- Spiked Performance & Growth DNA: Proven track record leading high-scale performance marketing, SEM, or paid media teams with deep mastery of auction mechanics, bidding logic, targeting, and multi-touch attribution.
- 6+ years experience in performance marketing, growth, digital advertising, or related relevant fields at high growth startups.
- First-Principles Innovator: A history of pioneering new, unproven channels or markets before standard playbooks existed. You thrive in complete ambiguity and create order out of noise.
- Holistic Growth Instincts: Sharp strategic judgment across both paid and organic levers. You view discovery as an integrated ecosystem, not just a series of isolated ad buys.
- Quantitative Rigor: Strong analytical instinct with a data-first approach to budget allocation, unit economics, incrementality, and performance measurement.
- AI & Search Curiosity: Deep, active fascination with AI-native discovery, LLM evolution, and answer-engine landscapes (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, etc.).
- Category-Building Energy: High-bandwidth communicator with executive presence, passionate about establishing a new industry discipline at the intersection of AI, performance marketing, and brand growth.
Our Guiding Principles
- Extreme Ownership
- Quality
- Curiosity and Play
- Make Our Customers Heroes
- Respectful Candor
Benefits
- Equity in a fast-growing startup
- Competitive benefits package tailored to your location
- Flexible time off policy
- Parental Leave
- A fun-loving and (just a bit) nerdy team that loves to move fast!
What you'll do
- Define AirOps’ playbook for AI-native advertising, creating frameworks for budget allocation, paid placements, organic authority, and content optimization across LLM platforms.
- Partner directly with marketing executives and growth teams to map early-adopter strategies, evaluate channel tradeoffs, testing mechanisms, and full-funnel ROI.
- Design and execute high-velocity quantitative experiments across emerging AI platforms to decode auction dynamics, recommendation algorithms, conversion triggers, and attribution models.
- Bridge performance marketing and AI Engine Optimization, guiding brands on structured data, authority-building, and direct paid placements.
- Serve as the public face and key voice of AirOps in the AI Ads ecosystem by publishing insights, educating executive buyers, and shaping market perception around the future of discovery.
- Translate customer learnings and experimental results into repeatable product specs and scalable go-to-market service motions.
What they require
- Proven track record leading high-scale performance marketing, SEM, or paid media teams with deep mastery of auction mechanics, bidding logic, targeting, and multi-touch attribution.
- 6+ years experience in performance marketing, growth, digital advertising, or related fields at high-growth startups.
- History of pioneering new, unproven channels or markets before standard playbooks existed.
- Ability to thrive in ambiguity and create order out of noise.
- Sharp strategic judgment across both paid and organic growth levers.
- Strong analytical instinct with a data-first approach to budget allocation, unit economics, incrementality, and performance measurement.
- Deep active fascination with AI-native discovery, LLM evolution, and answer-engine landscapes such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.
- High-bandwidth communicator with executive presence.
- Passion for establishing a new industry discipline at the intersection of AI, performance marketing, and brand growth.
Benefits
- Equity in a fast-growing startup
- Competitive benefits package tailored to your location
- Flexible time off policy
- Parental Leave
- A fun-loving and slightly nerdy team that loves to move fast
AirOps is the full-service platform for brand growth in the age of AI search. Its platform helps brands get found, recommended, and earn trust across AI search and LLM-driven discovery channels.