Senior Paid Search Manager
UK Visa Sponsorship Analytics
Analytics are greyed out due to low classification confidence (33.0%).
Occupation TypeMarketing and commercial managers
Occupation Code Skill LevelHigher Skilled
Sponsorship Salary Threshold
£50,100
(£25.69 per hour)
Occupation rate applies
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Description
Department: Marketing
Location: London
Compensation: £52,000 - £61,000 / year
Go City is transforming the way people see and experience the world’s greatest destinations.
We give our customers total flexibility to choose the experiences, tours and activities they want to visit at incredible savings.
Backed by highly successful Private Equity firm Exponent and headquartered in Covent Garden, London, the business is highly profitable with 3+ million customers globally. We have ambitious plans to leverage these capabilities to drive the business’ continued growth. Go City is excited for like-minded, problem-solving individuals to join the team and make their mark on our future.
We listen to our customers, our partners and our team, to help improve our business every day. And that’s where you come in! For more information and to explore at our products, visit Gocity.com.
Key Responsibilities
We're looking for a rigorous, commercially sharp Senior Paid Search Manager to own our search channel end-to-end - from keyword strategy and campaign architecture through to daily optimisation, feed management and performance reporting. This is a hands-on role: you'll be in the platform building, bidding and iterating yourself, not directing others to do it.
Paid search is one of our highest-intent, highest-converting channels - and this person will be its custodian. You'll be responsible for making every pound of search budget work as hard as possible, while simultaneously thinking about where the channel is going: how automation is changing the game, how Shopping and Performance Max are reshaping account structure, and how search fits into a broader full-funnel media strategy.
The role demands genuine mathematical fluency. Search is a numbers-first discipline - auction theory, bidding logic, marginal ROAS, query-level analysis - and you'll be expected to think and operate at that level every day, not just when preparing reports.
What You'll Do
Campaign Management & Optimisation
- Own the day-to-day management, optimisation and scaling of paid search campaigns across Google Ads and Microsoft Ads - search, shopping, Performance Max and DSA.
- Build and maintain a logical, well-structured account architecture that balances control and automation: knowing when to trust Smart Bidding and when to constrain it.
- Conduct rigorous, ongoing search query analysis - mining for new opportunities, identifying waste and shaping match type and negative keyword strategy accordingly.
- Manage Shopping and product feed campaigns including feed optimisation, custom labels, segmentation strategy and liaison with feed management tools.
- Write and test ad copy systematically - using RSA asset performance data, pinning strategy and structured experiments to drive CTR and Quality Score improvements.
- Monitor auction insights, competitor activity and share of voice, and adjust strategy in response.
- Own bid strategy decisions across the account - tROAS, tCPA, Maximise Conversions and manual approaches - with a clear rationale for each choice and the analytical rigour to back it up.
- Manage daily and monthly budget pacing across campaigns and ad groups, with a sharp eye on efficiency and an ability to reallocate spend dynamically when conditions change.
- Model budget scenarios and forecast performance: projecting clicks, conversions and revenue at different spend levels and articulating the trade-off clearly.
- Understand and apply marginal ROAS thinking - knowing the difference between average and incremental return, and how that should inform budget allocation decisions.
- Identify and act on opportunities to reduce wasted spend: low-quality traffic, irrelevant queries, poor-performing segments and cannibalising brand vs non-brand activity.
- Own the search measurement framework: conversion tracking, goal configuration, attribution settings and the integrity of the data flowing into reporting.
- Develop and evolve the paid search strategy: defining how the channel should grow, where the untapped opportunity lies, and how to stay ahead of platform changes.
- Stay close to Google and Microsoft product roadmaps — Performance Max evolution, AI-powered search formats, broad match changes, first-party data integration — and translate platform changes into account actions before they become problems.
- Build the case for new search investments: new keyword territories, new campaign types, new audience strategies. Ground recommendations in data and commercial logic.
- Define how paid search interacts with SEO, brand and upper-funnel channels — including where paid search should step back to avoid cannibalisation and where it should amplify.
- Act as the primary contact for Google and Microsoft account teams, extracting genuine value from those relationships rather than being sold to.
- Present search performance and strategy to senior stakeholders clearly — translating auction dynamics and bid logic into business language without losing the nuance.
- Collaborate with SEO, CRM, product and trading teams to align on keyword strategy, landing page quality, promotional calendars and audience data.
- 4–7 years of hands-on paid search experience, with a significant portion in a senior or lead capacity - you're managing accounts, not just assisting.
- Deep, platform-native expertise in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads: you know the interface, the automation logic, the reporting quirks and where the platform leads you astray.
- Strong Shopping and feed management experience - you understand how product data quality drives campaign performance and what to do when it doesn't.
- Proven experience with Performance Max: you know how it works under the hood, what control levers exist and how to structure it alongside traditional search campaigns.
- A track record of managing search budgets of £500k+ annually and delivering against commercial KPIs - CPA, ROAS, revenue, market share.
- Experience with bid management platforms (SA360, Marin, Skai) is a plus, particularly for large or complex account structures.
- Search is a mathematical discipline and you treat it as one. You're fluent in auction theory, Quality Score mechanics, bid modifiers, impression share maths and how they interact.
- You can build a budget model, forecast a bid strategy change and calculate the marginal ROAS of incremental spend without being prompted.
- Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills are non-negotiable: pivot tables, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH, statistical functions, scenario modelling. You use spreadsheets to think.
- Comfortable with statistical concepts: significance testing, confidence intervals, regression. You know when a test result is real and when it's noise.
- SQL or Python experience is a meaningful differentiator - especially for query-level analysis, automated reporting or Google Ads scripts.
Curiosity & Intellectual Drive
- You follow the evolution of search with genuine interest - broad match changes, PMax asset group logic, AI Overviews, first-party data in bidding - and you form opinions about what it means for how you run accounts.
- You ask 'why is this happening?' before you ask 'what should I do about it?' - and you dig into the data until you find the real answer.
- You're energised by the puzzle of a search account: why is CPA spiking? Is it a query problem, a landing page problem, a seasonality problem or a competitor problem? You enjoy working it out.
- You're comfortable with ambiguity and will form a view from incomplete information rather than waiting for perfect data.
- You can think beyond the account and articulate how paid search fits into the broader marketing mix: when it's driving demand, when it's harvesting it, and what that means for budget allocation.
- You understand the brand vs non-brand dynamic deeply - including the cannibalisation debate - and can make a data-informed recommendation rather than defaulting to orthodoxy.
- You can build a compelling investment case: defining the opportunity, sizing it, modelling the return and presenting it in a way that earns budget.
- You have a point of view on where search is going - automation, AI, the role of first-party data, the decline of match type control - and you're already adapting to it.
- Annual Go City Explorer Pass allowance
- Enhanced pension contributions. (5% employer)
- Life assurance: 4x your base salary
- Time off:
- Annual leave: 25 days + bank holidays
- Option to buy additional 5 days annual leave per year
- Upgraded Family Leave
- 1x Community day. Take a day off to give back to the community
- Work from Anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year
- Health care cash plan
- Personal Learning Budget & dedicated time for development
- EAP providing access to counselling, finance support, etc.
- Cycle to Work Scheme