Director, SEO (AI Engine Optimization)

Who we are At CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG), our mission is to give people the power to reach their destination. We started as a small team of developers determined to bring trust and transparency to car shopping. Since then, our history of innovation and go-to-market acceleration has driven industry-leading growth. In fact, we’re the largest and fastest-growing automotive marketplace, and we’ve been profitable for over 15 years. What we do The market is evolving, and we are too, moving the entire automotive journey online and guiding our customers through every step. That includes everything from the sale of an old car to the financing, purchase, and delivery of a new one. Today, tens of millions of consumers visit CarGurus.com each month, and ~30,000 dealerships use our products. But they're not the only ones who love CarGurus—our employees do, too. We have a people-first culture that fosters kindness, collaboration, and innovation, and empowers our Gurus with tools to fuel their career growth. Disrupting a trillion-dollar industry requires fresh and diverse perspectives. Come join us for the ride! Role Overview We’re looking for an analytical, strategic-thinker, result-oriented leader with experience in search and AI engine optimization (SEO/AIO) to join our team at CarGurus and drive our innovation in AI organic traffic. Within the Performance Marketing team, this individual will be responsible for growing CarGurus organic traffic and conversions, focused on AI search and AI/social engines, building a best-in-class organic program and cementing CarGurus as a top organic result for automotive search in the US and our International markets, Canada and the UK. This role will proactively research, analyze and communicate emerging trends in new AI channels, drive the strategy and aggressive testing plans, and execute, measure and optimize SEO/organic initiatives to ensure we are on the leading edge, in partnership with a team of SEO specialists, engineers, Editorial, Product, Marketing Analytics teams. What you'll do Executive Communication Strategic Alignment: Proactively communicate AI search and emerging SEO trends, key implications for CarGurus and suggested strategic priorities to senior executives and board-level audiences. This includes crafting compelling narratives supported by data, anticipating objections, and driving alignment around recommendations. Leadership Results Driven Innovation: Balance strategic risk-taking and the practical implementation of new ideas to drive SEO/AIO conversions growth and industry leadership. Demonstrate a willingness to allocate resources toward testing innovative high-potential tactics—like AI-driven content clusters or unconventional site architectures—while driving a framework for measurable results. Strategy Development: Define and size opportunities, strategic priorities, and roadmap to drive organic AI/social growth based on emerging trends, current performance and data insights; includes informing the Editorial Content team’s roadmap and prioritization. Execution: Oversee execution and optimization of performance-oriented campaigns initiatives across search AI (e.g. Google AI overviews), emerging AI engines (e.g. Chat-GPT) and social platforms (e.g. Reddit, X, Meta, YouTube) to drive organic visits and conversions. Conversion Optimization: Continuously optimize landing page conversion rates at various stages of the customer journey, from content/research to conversion-oriented pages. Testing and Measurement: Analyze marketing data and metrics to measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts, including A/B testing, report building and analysis, and communicate the results and data-driven decisions to key stakeholders. Reporting Forecasting: Monitor SEO/AI performance across all CarGurus markets, reporting regularly to the Executive Team on synthesized trends, work and impact. Resource Management: Define and manage budget and engineering resource allocation. Cross-functional C ... (truncated, view full listing at source)