Lead Paid Media Buyer

Lead Paid Media Buyer

Cape Town, South Africa | $3,000–$4,000 USD/month / Fully-Remote

We’re scaling every department at SpredX, and there’s a seat with your name on it. We are now looking at someone to lead the team and transform the department!

About Us

SpredX is a full stack AI-native growth agency for local businesses. We provide web development and hosting, an analytics suite, SEO & AEO services, ongoing content production, social media management, ads management, and CRM and leads automation - the whole growth stack, run by one team instead of five vendors.

Our mission is to become the market leader for local business growth. We run over 100 active clients with a lean team, and we build and use our own AI tooling so every person does the work of a much larger agency. We’ve doubled in the last three months, and we’re hiring to keep pace.

About the Role

You’ll lead performance advertising across our entire client portfolio. That means owning Google and Meta ads strategy end to end, from account structure and creative direction through optimization and reporting, and setting the standard every account is run to. Our clients are home services, medical, legal and other local businesses trusting us with real budgets and real growth targets.

This is a lead role, not just a senior seat. You’ll run accounts hands-on while building the playbooks, processes and AI-assisted workflows that let paid media scale across dozens of accounts at once. You’ll work directly with our Founder & CEO on paid media strategy and, as we hire, help recruit and develop the media buyers who join your team.

Key Responsibilities

• Set paid media strategy across the portfolio, deciding channel mix, budget allocation and growth targets for each client.
• Manage Google Ads accounts across Search, Performance Max, Display and YouTube — from campaign structure and keyword/audience strategy through daily bid, budget and pacing management.
• Manage Meta Ads accounts, including audience and campaign structure, budget allocation and full-funnel optimization.
• Lead ad creative strategy: brief concepts, write and review ad copy, test hooks and formats, and use performance data to decide what to scale, refresh or kill.
• Build and own the paid media playbook: account setup standards, optimization routines, QA checklists and reporting templates.
• Monitor account health across the portfolio, catching underperformance, budget issues or tracking problems before they cost clients money.
• Turn performance data into client-ready monthly reports, and lead strategy conversations with clients when it matters most.
• Push our AI tooling further, finding new ways to speed up research, copywriting, reporting and audits across the team.
• Help hire, onboard and mentor future media buyers as the paid media team grows.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 4+ years of hands-on experience running paid ads with real client budgets, including agency-side experience managing a portfolio of accounts.
• Expert in Google Ads or Meta Ads, and strong in the other.
• A track record of hitting and scaling performance targets (CPL, CPA, ROAS or similar), with the strategic thinking to explain why an account performed the way it did and what to do next.
• Experience setting paid media strategy, not just executing it — budget allocation, channel mix and testing roadmaps.
• A strong grasp of tracking and measurement — conversion tracking, UTMs, and reading data in Google Analytics or similar.
• Confident client-facing communication — you can walk a business owner through results and recommendations in plain language.
• Comfortable using AI tools every day, and keen to shape how the team uses them.
• Self-directed with high standards, and a natural fit for a small, fast-moving team where ownership is expected.

Nice to have:

• Experience running paid media for local or service-based businesses (home services, medical, legal, hospitality, etc.).
• Experience leading, training or reviewing the work of other media buyers.
• Experience with TikTok Ads, Microsoft/Bing Ads or LinkedIn Ads.
• Basic design or video editing skills for quick creative iteration.

What Success Looks Like

• First 30 days: you’ve audited the portfolio, understand each client’s goals and history, and have a clear view of where the biggest wins are.
• First 90 days: your accounts are hitting or beating their targets, the paid media playbook is documented, and you’ve identified the accounts ready to scale.
• Ongoing: clients trust your recommendations, paid media is a reason clients stay, and you’re building the team and systems that let us run more accounts, better, than a traditional agency.

Why Join Us

• Salary in USD, fully remote. Work from anywhere in South Africa.
• Lead from day one. Own paid media strategy across the whole agency, and build the team around you as we scale.
• Direct access to our Founder & CEO. No layers of management between you and real decisions.
• Real ownership. Your strategy, your standards, your results.
• AI-native from day one. Hands-on with workflows most agencies haven’t built yet.