Technical Search Director Contractor

LONDON, UK
(Hybrid Working - 2-3 days in the office per week)

Day rate
: £288

Working pattern
: 4 days per week

Croud is a global, full service digital marketing agency with a unique business model that helps businesses drive sustainable growth in the new world of marketing. Croud was recently named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the second year in a row, and was named Performance Marketing Employer of the Year by PMW.

At Croud, we unlock potential by elevating our people, clients, and communities within a rapidly advancing and complex economy. Croud was recently named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the second year in a row, and was named Performance Marketing Employer of the Year by PMW.

Our culture is strategically driven and inspired by a shared long-term vision. It is collaborative and connected, with a focus on continuous learning and mutual support.

We are energised by future thinking, driving innovation to achieve better outcomes. We are instinctively generous, actively including and empowering our people. Above all, we are purpose-driven, committed to positively impacting our people, the planet, and our global communities.

We are looking for an experienced Technical Search Director Contractor for 6 weeks to lead the strategic direction, operational excellence, and technical delivery of Croud’s Web Experience and Technical SEO capability, ensuring client websites are optimised for modern search discovery, AI chat engines, and technical performance across the Organic Performance portfolio.

You will serve as Croud’s interim senior technical authority on Web Experience and Technical SEO work streams. This is a specialist director role that combines expert-level, hands‑on technical execution with cross‑departmental leadership and agency‑wide capability development.

Reporting into the Head of Organic Strategy, you will work in close alignment with Croud’s Organic Strategy teams to audit, architect, and roadmap technical SEO improvements designed for next‑generation search. You will ensure client websites are fully crawlable, accessible, and structured for maximum content extraction, not only for traditional search engines, but also for AI summaries and conversational LLM interfaces. Acting as the vital bridge between SEO strategy and technical delivery, you will partner directly with client web development teams to translate audits into clear, actionable code specifications and tickets, while serving as the senior point of expertise on technical projects such as site migrations and platform rebuilds.

• Advanced Web Auditing: Lead end-to-end technical site audits, identifying structural obstacles, rendering issues, and optimisation opportunities to enhance site usability, speed, and indexing efficiency. With experience with Apache configuration files (redirects) and knowledge of CLI (command‑line interface) tools.

• Next‑Gen Search Optimisation: Architect technical strategies tailored for modern search ecosystems, ensuring client websites are optimised for crawlability, accessibility, and content extraction across traditional search, AI summaries and generative AI chat experiences.

• Semantic & Structural Design:
  Oversee structured data schema implementation, semantic HTML, site architecture, and rendering optimisation (client‑side, server‑side, dynamic rendering) to maximise machine understanding.

• Performance & Core Web Vitals: Oversee front‑end web performance analysis, leveraging tools like Chrome Dev Tools, Lighthouse, Page Speed Insights and Web Page Test  to drive Core Web Vitals compliance.

• Actionable Ticketing: Translate complex technical audit findings into…