AI Search Director — Contract-to-Hire

This person must be located in the US or Canada We are Fantasy. The creative partner behind the world’s biggest digital products, launching the next generation of intelligent experiences. For over two decades, we’ve partnered with industry leaders like Google, Microsoft, Nike, Spotify, and Ford to shape products and services used by billions daily. Your Role. Fantasy is launching a new strategic AI search offering for enterprise brands. We need a Director+ who can operate at executive altitude and own our Generative/AI Search (Generative Engine Optimization/Answer Engine Optimization) offerings: set the vision, stand up pods, ship work weekly, and mature the service into a scalable program that drives revenue and authority. You’ll own client strategy and satisfaction, orchestrate partners/tools, and collaborate across Product, Content, Engineering, and Data to expand AEO/GEO and adjacent agentic services. Starts as contract with a path to full-time. Key Responsibilities • Enterprise Strategy & Thought Leadership: Shape the future of AEO at an enterprise scale and make Fantasy the go-to partner in the space. - Leading engagements end‑to‑end: discovery, benchmarking, roadmap, and iterative execution; presenting to senior stakeholders and securing buy‑in. - Defining KPIs and reporting: visibility/coverage, citation accuracy, sentiment trends, content freshness, time‑to‑insight, and ROI; guiding internal teams in building dashboards and narratives. - Building our center of excellence: documenting frameworks (intent graphs, IA for AI), playbooks, templates, and training modules; mentoring internal team. - Representing Fantasy as a strategic voice in the AEO space—helping define what best-in-class looks like. • Executional Excellence & Optimization: Solve for today while building toward what’s next. - Diagnosing and improving answer engine performance: visibility, citations, content accuracy, and entity authority; identify opportunity zones and quick wins; benchmark competitors. - Translate insights into workflows: content engineering, entity/knowledge graph improvements, and technical remediation plans (delivered via partners).Build/refine topic configurations and QFN-style query sets, prioritizing non‑branded queries for category insights and branded terms for sentiment analysis. - Identify opportunity zones and quick wins for clients—drive impact early and often. • Operational Enablement & Ecosystem Orchestration: Build the machine that builds the future—internally and across client ecosystems. - Operating platform‑agnostic; evaluating and running leading tools like Profound, AirOps, Graphite and similar systems; codifying tool selection principles. - Standing up pods and rhythms; defining roles, setting cadence, sustaining momentum; delivering QBRs and executive-ready materials. - Coordinating partners; ensuring alignment between agencies, platforms, and internal teams for measurable implementation. Experience and Skills • 8–12+ years in SEO with a proven pivot into AEO/GEO/AI Search; deep experience with intent modeling, entity optimization, and answer engine behaviors. • Track record leading enterprise programs across multiple LOBs; adept at executive stakeholder management and monthly subscription/retainer models. • Hands‑on practitioner who can turn data into actionable recommendations within days; deliver early wins while building durable systems • Platform/operator mindset: experience evaluating and integrating tools like Profound/AirOps/Graphite (or equivalents) and synthesizing outputs into strategy. • Enablement leader: has built cohort trainings, role definitions, templates, and operating cadences that leave clients more self‑sufficient. • Executive communication: concise storytelling, strong decks, and the ability to simplify complexity and drive decisions. • Experience with LLM-centric content engineering: structured content, schema, knowledge graphs, and prompt‑safe content patterns. • Familiarity with technical remediation pathways and collaboration with dev teams. Fantasy EOE Fantasy is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Since 1999, diversity has been vital to our success and ability to create products and services used and loved by millions of people all over the world. We are committed to continually fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. Apply tot his job