Search Director

Job Description

In this role, you'll define and lead the organic and AI-search vision for Capital One, helping the brand earn visibility wherever consumers search, discover, compare, and make financial decisions.

As Director of Search, you are both a strategic leader and a hands‑on innovator - able to translate a rapidly evolving search landscape into practical, measurable opportunities across traditional SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), AI Overviews, and large language model experiences. You will lead an integrated SEO/GEO strategy informed by search behavior, AI trends, competitive intelligence, and Capital One business priorities, turning that strategy into prioritized roadmaps across technical, content, brand, and experience considerations.

This role is embedded within Critical Mass's broader Capital One performance program. You will connect organic and AI-search strategy to paid search, media planning, measurement, content, audience intelligence, and cross-agency work - while partnering closely with Capital One teams to guide implementation, measure performance, and identify where search insights should influence future investment.

Critical Mass

Strategy and Planning

Account Planning and Brand Planning

• Own the vision, strategic roadmap, and prioritized recommendations for Capital One SEO, GEO, and AEO across priority Retail Consumer Bank experiences
• Develop and continuously evolve an integrated SEO/GEO strategy informed by consumer search behavior, AI-search trends, competitive intelligence, business objectives, and the broader performance marketing plan
• Lead technical, content, and AI-search audits, translating findings into clear optimization recommendations, sequencing, dependencies, and expected business impact
• Guide ongoing optimization across priority Capital One content and digital experiences, partnering with client and agency teams to support implementation rather than operating as an isolated SEO workstream
• Serve as the senior Search lead within the Capital One account leadership team, bringing a search-first perspective to strategy, planning, innovation, and investment decisions
• Connect organic search and GEO/AEO insights with paid search - including emerging LLM-search opportunities - to improve coverage, learning, efficiency, and customer journey visibility
• Define the role of search across the integrated performance ecosystem, connecting search intelligence with media, audience, creative, content, measurement, and experience teams
• Build a performance measurement approach for organic and AI-search visibility, defining practical KPIs, baselines, benchmarks, health ranges, and reporting that ties search outcomes to Capital One business objectives
• Monitor traditional search, AI Overviews, LLMs, answer engines, and emerging search behaviors to identify material shifts, risks, and opportunities for Capital One
• Deliver executive-ready performance reporting and strategic updates that turn search and LLM data into clear recommendations and inform ongoing investment opportunities
• Develop testing and learning roadmaps for search, including content, technical, experience, and AI-search hypotheses; evaluate results and translate learnings into scaled recommendations
• Partner with Capital One brand, product, technology, analytics, legal/compliance, and marketing stakeholders to ensure recommendations are actionable within enterprise and governance requirements
• Collaborate seamlessly with Critical Mass media, strategy, analytics, creative, PMO, and other agency/consulting partners, minimizing handoffs and creating a connected end-to-end search approach
• Lead competitive and category analysis across both traditional SERPs and AI/LLM environments, identifying where competitors are earning visibility, citations, authority, and consumer preference
• Define search-driven requirements for technical SEO, structured data, information architecture, internal linking, content quality, accessibility, indexability, page experience, entity signals, and AI-citation readiness
• Translate customer intent and search demand into content and experience opportunities that support consumer needs across discovery, consideration, and decision journeys
• Establish clear processes, quality standards, documentation, and governance for Search deliverables so recommendations are consistent, traceable, and easy for client teams to operationalize
• Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing…