Head of AI Ads

About AirOps AirOps is the full-service platform for brand growth in the age of AI search. As consumers shift from traditional search engines to platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the entire ruleset of growth is being rewritten. Buyers now rely on agents to discover, recommend, and purchase products and services for them. If your brand isn't part of the answer, you aren't in the running. Our platform offers everything a brand needs to get found, recommended, and earn trust. We work with category leaders, including teams at Ramp, Chime, Airbnb, ServiceNow, and Rippling, to drive visibility and accelerate growth from AI search. Backed by Greylock, Unusual Ventures, Wing VC, and Founder Collective, we're headquartered in San Francisco, New York, and Montevideo. The Role We are hiring a Head of AI Ads to define, invent, and lead this emerging new product line. You will be AirOps’ principal authority on generative ads, building the foundational playbooks for how the world's top brands deploy capital across LLM-driven discovery channels. Equal parts category-defining strategist, growth systems engineer, and 0 to 1 operator, you will sit at the tip of the spear: converting early market signals into scalable product motions and teaching the industry how to win in the post-search era. If you are a high-level performance marketing leader, growth operator, or founder who is eager to invent the future of digital advertising from scratch, this is your platform. What you’ll do Category Blueprint & Strategy: Define AirOps’ playbook for AI-native advertising, creating the definitive frameworks for budget allocation, paid placements, organic authority, and content optimization across LLM platforms. Customer Growth Architecture: Partner directly with marketing executives and growth teams to map out early-adopter strategies, evaluating channel tradeoffs, testing mechanisms, and full-funnel ROI. 0-to-1 Experimentation Engine: Design and execute high-velocity quantitative experiments across emerging AI platforms to decode auction dynamics, recommendation algorithms, conversion triggers, and attribution models. Paid & Organic Convergence: Bridge the gap between performance marketing and AI Engine Optimization (AEO), guiding brands on when to leverage structured data, authority-building, or direct paid placements. Industry Thought Leadership: Serve as the public face and key voice of AirOps in the AI Ads ecosystem: publishing insights, educating executive buyers, and shaping market perception around the future of discovery. Product & Practice Building: Translate front-line customer learnings and experimental results into repeatable product specs and scalable go-to-market service motions. What you bring Spiked Performance & Growth DNA: Proven track record leading high-scale performance marketing, SEM, or paid media teams with deep mastery of auction mechanics, bidding logic, targeting, and multi-touch attribution. 6+ years experience in performance marketing, growth, digital advertising, or related relevant fields at high growth startups. First-Principles Innovator: A history of pioneering new, unproven channels or markets before standard playbooks existed. You thrive in complete ambiguity and create order out of noise. Holistic Growth Instincts: Sharp strategic judgment across both paid and organic levers. You view discovery as an integrated ecosystem, not just a series of isolated ad buys. Quantitative Rigor: Strong analytical instinct with a data-first approach to budget allocation, unit economics, incrementality, and performance measurement. AI & Search Curiosity: Deep, active fascination with AI-native discovery, LLM evolution, and answer-engine landscapes (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, etc.). Category-Building Energy: High-bandwidth communicator with executive presence, passionate about establishing a new industry discipline at the intersection of AI, performance marketing, and brand growth. Our Guiding Principles Extreme Ownership Quality Curiosity and Play Make Our Customers Heroes Respectful Candor Benefits Equity in a fast-growing startup Competitive benefits package tailored to your location Flexible time off policy Parental Leave A fun-loving and (just a bit) nerdy team that loves to move fast!