Senior Manager of SEO & Generative Engine Optimization

Our Brand

At J.Jill, we’re redefining what it means to dress and live with ease. As a women-led, Boston-based lifestyle brand with 200+ stores nationwide, we design thoughtful, inspired apparel and accessories that celebrate the totality of all women. We’re entering an exciting chapter of growth — expanding our footprint, reaching new customers, and deepening long‑standing relationships. We're seeking bold thinkers and doers to join us.

With competitive pay and benefits, a supportive culture, and the chance to make a real impact, this is more than a job, it’s an opportunity to bring our ethos keep it simple, make it matter to life in new and inspiring ways.

We are seeking an experienced, strategic, and innovation‑oriented Senior Manager of SEO & Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to lead our enterprise organic search program. This role is responsible for driving results across traditional SEO, local SEO, technical SEO, and the emerging landscape of AI‑powered search and answer engines (Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, etc.).

The ideal candidate has 8+ years of hands‑on and strategic experience managing large‑scale SEO programs—ideally in a direct‑to‑consumer retail environment—and is skilled at partnering across Product, Technology, Creative, Analytics, and Compliance to execute high‑impact organic growth initiatives.

This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the digital future of a leading fashion brand, and combines program leadership, SEO strategy, AI‑driven innovation, technical fluency, and cross‑functional influence at the highest levels of the organization.

• Own and evolve the enterprise SEO + GEO roadmap, ensuring alignment with business goals, product strategy, and the changing AI‑driven search ecosystem.
• Develop strategies for ranking in both traditional search and generative search interfaces, including AI answer engines.
• Drive entity‑based SEO, structured data expansion, and E‑E‑A‑T optimization to strengthen brand authority in generative engines.
• Identify and pilot AI‑driven SEO workflows (content augmentation, clustering, topical mapping, prompt engineering, automation, QA).
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to influence roadmap priorities, advocate for SEO needs, and support major site redesigns or migrations.
• Work closely with Legal/Compliance on content and claims approvals, ensuring compliance does not hinder organic growth.
• Oversee technical SEO audits and prioritization of fixes, working with engineering teams to ensure timely delivery.
• Guide structured data, schema strategies, indexation optimization, internal linking enhancements, and page‑speed improvements.
• Maintain oversight of local SEO operations, including listings accuracy and local authority‑building strategies (executed through team members or vendors).
• Participate in the content operations process to ensure adherence to SEO and GEO best practices (e.g. editorial planning, content briefs, calendar ownership, and governance). Ensure all content is optimized for both traditional SEO and emerging GEO requirements (answer‑first formatting, entity optimization, structured content).
• Provide guidance on CMS content publishing and content lifecycle management.
• Oversee relationships, SOWs, quarterly reviews, and performance evaluations for key SEO and GEO vendors (e.g. Conductor, Chatmeter, Milestone, PR partners, etc.).
• Manage SEO budget tracking and forecasting in partnership with Analytics and Finance.
• Lead test‑and‑learn frameworks for SEO, GEO, SERP experimentation, AI search monitoring, and competitive intelligence.
• Deliver monthly and quarterly executive‑level reporting on organic performance, highlighting insights, risks, and opportunities.
• Use GSC, Conductor, GA4, and custom dashboards to analyze trends and guide data‑driven recommendations.
• Lead cross‑functional working groups to evangelize SEO + GEO best practices and elevate capabilities across the organization. Provide training on evolving GEO best practices, AI search fundamentals, and responsible use of generative AI.
• Serve as the team's senior point of escalation for complex SEO or GEO questions.

• 8+…