senior lead, seo

Shopify’s mission is to make commerce better for everyone. To deliver on that promise, we’re building a unified commerce platform that allows anyone, anywhere to pursue independence through entrepreneurship.

We’re looking for a Sr. Lead, SEO to join the organic growth team and shepherd the existing SEO team into the new area of search-powered acquisition. 

About the Role: 

This is a leadership role overseeing the entire organic SEO team (exclusive of merchant SEO). The remit is expansive and inclusive of technical / site health SEO, product / tooling SEO, content SEO, and CRO under the auspices of organic growth. It oversees all domains and locales with an opportunity to investigate strategic acquisitions to grow our organic impact globally. This role is a mix of strategic visioning + roll-up-your-sleeves execution. 

The SEO team is responsible for increasing our organic presence across all search channels along with driving new merchant acquisition through those channels by leveraging a combination of established and innovative SEO strategies (content optimization, conversion rate optimization, etc). The team is multidisciplinary, comprising of technical, product / tooling, and content SEO and is also responsible for managing Shopify and all ancillary domain’s health. This team sits on the global content and seo team in growth but partners closely with all organizations across Shopify.

Remit: 

1. Establish baseline of search and organic for all properties and domains. Audit existing infrastructure and strategies and provide recommendations for optimizations and improvements. 
2. Identify and scale new organic growth opportunities, working with cross functional teams to establish and accomplish goals. Plugged into organic community with ability to draw conclusions from industry news and learnings and apply those to our roadmaps.
3. Lead a team of talented SEOs in high tempo experimentation and implementation of recommendations and defensive strategies, especially in an ever-evolving landscape, with an eye towards innovation (inclusive of AI)

Responsibilities: 

• Collaborate cross functionally with senior leaders across Growth, Core, and other orgs as required 
• Build frameworks + processes to support site experience work 
• Identify + build relationships with stakeholders to ensure initiatives are deployed to success
• Define opportunities for strategic SEO growth (inclusive of all engines, and AI / LLMs) across all Shopify products and properties 
• Evangelize the importance of best practices and challenges assumptions with data 
• Own routine industry and competitive analysis to benchmark our performance and identify gaps in strategy 

Requirements: 

• Proven impact overseeing or managing complex cross-cutting initiatives in previous high visibility roles, ideally with product management or product management-style background
• Comfortable managing product, design, development teams both internal (sitting cross-org) as well as external (BPO / contract) 
• Experience setting up and running SEO and CRO tests across multiple locales 
• Proven experience with technical SEO tool sets (cloud computing, building + running SEO tests with experience in data consoles, working knowledge of HTML / HTTP / Javascript / CSS)
• High confidence with SEO tools and web analytics applications (AHREFs, SEMRUSH, GSC, GA, Looker, etc)
• Genuine user empathy and a knack for storytelling. This is a leadership position which requires both :)