Senior Paid Media Manager (Paid Social & Programmtic)

SMG North America; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

SMG North America seeks a Senior Paid Media Manager to lead digital media operations with a focus on programmatic and paid social strategies. This role, based in Leeds, offers a competitive salary starting at £60,000, along with a 10% discretionary bonus. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in media buying and team leadership, driving successful campaigns in a dynamic environment.

Benefits

10% discretionary bonus

£1,800 yearly wellbeing fund

Free Headspace subscription

£500 yearly Learning Fund

4 extra Wellbeing Days off

Flexible and hybrid working

Qualifications

• Proven experience in programmatic and paid social media trading.
• Strong leadership skills and experience coaching a high-performing team.
• Demonstrable success in generating business growth.

Responsibilities

• Lead digital media trading and campaign activation within the Media team.
• Manage the entire campaign process, ensuring best practices are followed.
• Coach junior team members and monitor workloads for effective distribution.

Skills

Programmatic operations

Paid Social media

Leadership and team development

Commercial acumen

Analytical skills

Job description

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Location: London or Leeds, 1-2 days a week in office

Salary: From £60,000 + 10% discretionary bonus

Level: Senior Manager level with responsibility over a team

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Paid Media Manager to join our Media team on a 1 year fixed-term contract. In this role, you will lead a team of digital media trading specialists driving paid media (programmatic and paid social) optimisation across retailer first-party data. You will own digital trading and operations for first-party data retailer propositions within SMG, and be ready to get hands-on during busy times or new launches. You will manage commercial tracking, spend allocation, profitability, and partner agreements, whilst collaborating across teams to innovate with tech, tools, and SMG media products, leading new product rollouts and evolving retail media partnerships.

You will be the go-to expert on audience targeting, measurement, and technical implementation, helping to shape the future of retail media trading.

If you love variety, thrive in a fast-paced environment, and embrace change with energy, this could be your right role.

Why SMG?

At SMG, we hire for the future, which is fast-moving and changing shape. Do you have the potential to help shape our business? We’re looking for brilliant, diverse talent who want to grow with us—people who are curious, ambitious, and eager to learn, whether as specialists or across teams.

Our culture is everything. If you’re someone who stays honest, stays hungry, stays foolish, and has fun, you’ll feel right at home here.

We value those who take ownership of their growth and bring fresh perspectives. That’s why we’re committed to equity, inclusion, and building a place where everyone feels empowered to grow. At SMG, it’s not just about filling a role but building the future together.

We’re proud to be ranked the #1 Best Marketing and Media Agency and to have received World-Class accreditation from Best Companies.

• 10% discretionary bonus
• £1,800 yearly wellbeing fund (on top of your salary!)
• Free Headspace subscription
• £500 yearly “Learning Fund” for learning
• 4 extra Wellbeing Days off per year
• Summer & Winter conferences + year-round celebrations
• 4pm finishes every Friday
• Flexible and hybrid working

Explore all our benefits here

Are We What You’re Looking For?

We move fast, adapt quickly, and like to challenge each other. We're looking for people who enjoy the buzz of change, the satisfaction of building something better, and the joy of working with a close-knit, values-driven team.

This isn’t for everyone, but if you thrive in this environment, we’d love to meet you!

A Little Bit About You

We are looking for someone who can demonstrate pro-active leadership of digital media operations within performance marketing.

Specifically, the candidate must be able to demonstrate:

• Previous experience in Programmatic and Paid Social media ops/trading
• Experience in media buying (Paid Social essential).
• Essential platform experience: Meta, additional social platforms, and Programmatic beneficial
• Experience running lower funnel ROI campaigns essential (CPA, ROAS, ROI).
• Experience coaching and development of a high performing team.
• A proven track record in delivering business growth in a fast-paced, challenging environment.
• Strong commercial acumen, able to work seamlessly with data & financial reporting.
• Practical, analytical and visionary expertise – with the ability to think big picture but dive into detail when required.
• The ability to work with multiple senior stakeholders (internal and external) to deliver breakthrough results.
• Technically savvy and problem solver; Able to problem solve and ideate around technical challenges in the Adtech space.

Don’t meet every single requirement? We still want to hear from you. If you believe you’d thrive in this role, your unique perspective might be just what we’re looking for.

What You’ll Be Doing:

Your days will be dynamic. You might find yourself:

Campaign activation, management, and reporting

• Lead on digital trading and activation within your team. You are the technical lead for digital operations and are able to advise on technical implementation challenges and solutions.
• Oversee the team's end-to-end campaign activation and management. This includes, but is not limited to troubleshooting, conversion tracking build, preview link creation, campaign build, 1PD audience push, pacing, and optimisation.
• Ensure media trading best practices are outlined and followed across the team. QA campaign activation, optimisation and reporting.
• Ensure we continue to define SMGs USP for digital activations and ensure that the whole team is clear on what this is.
• Maintain watertight processes and campaign spend tracking to minimise errors and ensure correct tracking of all campaigns and commercials. Continuously improve team efficiency through enhancements in processes, frameworks and inefficient campaign monitoring.
• Lead performance and optimisation within your team and help improve optimisation processes across teams.
• Jump in and get 'hands-on-keyboard' when required.

Lead and develop a team:

• Empower more junior team members to take responsibility for their own business areas and feel comfortable actively contributing new ideas.
• Ensure every team member has clear goals, objectives, and understanding of their responsibilities.
• Train digital team members across all disciplines to maximise resource utilisation during high workload periods.
• Monitor workloads across the team to ensure a fair distribution of work and minimise pressure on individuals.
• Foster a collaborative environment where each team member feels supported by their peers.
• Continue to source and build relationships with key media owners, allowing us to innovate channels and activations in new areas.
• Ensure all current activations are future-proof in the face of new industry changes and regulations.
• Test and learn new activation strategies to gain insights in the retail/commerce space.
• Identify potential tech partners needed to continue innovating and offering valuable tech and performance solutions.
• Ensure effective time management for team members by removing blockers and preventing them from being pulled in too many directions.
• Assist in upskilling digital marketing across the agency to improve knowledge and confidence in this area.
• Be a fountain of knowledge in your specialists to help colleagues and clients navigate technical challenges and queries.

Our Values:

Stay honest. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Have fun.

Explore what that means to us here

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Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Contract

Job function

• Job function

  Marketing

• Industries

  Advertising Services, Marketing Services, and Retail

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