We're hiring a senior operator who runs our paid media team day to day and makes our client accounts grow. You'll own project management and daily ops, lead our media buyers, and set strategy for the e-commerce brands we manage.
IKIGAI Media is a performance marketing agency. We run Meta and Google for DTC brands across supplements, beauty, fashion, food and beverage, and consumer tech, in the US, UK and EU. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll still get inside Ads Manager, but your main job is making sure every account has a plan, every buyer knows their priorities, and nothing slips.
Reports to: Sebastian Radu, CEO
Type: full-time, remote, B2B contract
1. Lead the media buying team
- Manage and coach our media buyers: weekly 1:1s, account reviews, clear priorities per buyer
- Review buyers' work: campaign structure, budget moves, test plans, naming and tracking hygiene
- Spot skill gaps and fix them with feedback, SOPs and pairing; tell us early when someone isn't working out
- Help hire and onboard new buyers as we grow
2. Set strategy for the accounts we manage
- Own a written growth plan per client: targets (CPA, ROAS, MER), budget path, test roadmap
- Bring new ideas every week: angles, offers, audiences, campaign structures, landing pages, seasonal plays
- Diagnose performance drops fast and decide what to do: wait, cut, iterate or restructure
- Plan Q4/BFCM and other peak periods months ahead, with offers and creative ready on time
3. Scale e-commerce brands profitably
- Grow spend while holding the client's margin-based targets, not vanity ROAS
- Run a disciplined creative testing process with our creative team: briefs, iterations, kill/scale rules
- Read the business behind the ads: AOV, contribution margin, LTV, stock, offer calendar
4. Run project management and daily ops
- Keep every client's tasks, deadlines and deliverables moving in Asana and Slack
- Run the weekly team cadence: standup, account reviews, Friday recap with action points
- Own reporting quality: weekly and monthly client reports that are accurate and on time
- Be the escalation point for clients on day-to-day questions; join strategy calls with Sebastian
- Improve our SOPs, templates and automations so the team spends less time on admin
- 4+ years of hands-on media buying on Meta, with Google Ads (Search, Shopping, PMax) as a strong second
- A track record of scaling e-commerce brands: you can name brands you took from roughly $10k to $100k+ monthly spend while holding target CPA or ROAS, and explain how
- 1-2+ years managing media buyers or a performance team, including reviewing their work and giving direct feedback
- Strategic range: you've built account strategies, test roadmaps and Q4 plans, not only executed someone else's
- Strong unit economics: you think in contribution margin, MER, breakeven ROAS and LTV, and know the limits of platform attribution
- Creative strategy instincts: you can read what's winning, write a sharp brief and turn a winner into ten iterations
- Real PM skills: you run multiple clients at once in Asana (or similar) without dropped balls
- Clear written English for client updates and team instructions; you write things down
- Ownership: you notice the problem before the client does and fix it without being asked
- Agency experience running 8+ accounts at once
- Supplements, beauty or fashion DTC; you know the policy and claims rules
- TikTok Ads, AppLovin or Pinterest experience
- Triple Whale, Motion or similar analytics and creative reporting tools
- Email and SMS (Klaviyo) or CRO experience, so you can spot problems beyond the ads
- Comfortable using AI tools and automations to speed up reporting and ops
- Romanian speaker (part of the team and some clients are in Romania)
- Days 1–30: learn and audit. Get access to every account, meet each buyer and the key client contacts. Audit every account and deliver a one-page health check per client: what's working, what's broken, top 3 opportunities.
- Days 31–60: take over the cadence. Run standups, account reviews and the Friday recap. Every client has a written growth plan and test roadmap. Buyers have clear weekly priorities and you're reviewing their changes.
- Days 61–90: drive results. At least 2 accounts scaling spend at or better than target. Q4 and January plans locked. One ops improvement shipped (a template, SOP or automation) that saves the team real hours.
- Client results: Accounts hit their agreed CPA / ROAS / MER targets; spend grows on accounts that can take it
- Retention No client lost to performance or communication issues; clients renew and expand scope
- Team: Buyers hit their account targets, improve quarter on quarter, and stay
- Strategy Every account has a current written plan; 2+ new tests or ideas per account each week
- Ops Reports on time and accurate; no missed deadlines or launches; tasks up to date in Asana
Our stack: Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, GA4, Triple Whale, Windsor.ai, Slack, Asana, Google Workspace, Figma, Frame.io and Claude for reporting and automation.
- Compensation: Starting at €2000 fixed monthly fee on a B2B contract, plus a performance bonus tied to client results and retention
- Fully remote, flexible hours with 4 hours of overlap with Bucharest time (EET)
- Real ownership: you shape how the team works, not just follow a process
- A varied portfolio of DTC brands across US, UK and EU markets
- A team that uses AI and automation heavily, so less time on busywork
Send the following to sebastian@ikigaimedia.co.uk with the subject "Paid Media Ops Lead":
- Your CV or LinkedIn
- Two brands you scaled: starting and ending monthly spend, the target you held, and the 3 decisions that made the difference
- A short note (max 1 page): you inherit an e-com account whose CPA rose 40% in 3 weeks while spend stayed flat. What do you check first, and what do you tell the client this week?
- Process: intro call (30 min) → live account review with Sebastian (60 min, we share a real anonymised account) → paid trial task → offer.