Sr. Manager, PPC Marketing

About Certus
We sit at the intersection of people and technology—building training and education solutions that help more than 4 million learners each year enter, advance, or reinvent their careers.

Our customers are some of the world's most recognized brands: Amazon, Siemens, Geico, Chick-fil-A, and others who trust us to develop their people at scale.

How We Work
Our teams span software engineering, instructional design, creative writing, consultative sales, marketing, and beyond. Movement between roles isn't just possible; it's encouraged. We're building something that requires people who want to keep growing.

Who Thrives Here

• Self-starters who bring a get-it-done mindset and don't wait for permission

• Builders drawn to a fast-moving industry where the landscape keeps shifting

• Humans who are innovative, brave, kind, and bring their full selves to work

The workforce learning market is evolving rapidly, and we're defining where it goes next. If you want work that matters, room to grow, and a team that means it when they talk about culture—we should talk.

Position Overview:

This is the senior operator and senior leader of Certus's PPC function. You own performance across a multi-brand, multi-vertical portfolio, and you lead a team of six PPC managers across three levels of seniority. The Director of Digital Marketing sets the vision and the where-next; you make sure the function actually gets there, with coherence, accountability, and craft.
The scope is meaningful. You'll oversee paid search across roughly 100 domains, five verticals, and $26M in annual spend, with that figure expected to grow. Several of those verticals operate in regulated industries, which shapes everything from claim language to landing page strategy. The decisions you make compound.

This role asks for range. You operate at the strategy table, you lead and develop people, and when the team's capacity is genuinely constrained, you step in and execute at the platform level alongside them. You are the connective tissue between vision and execution, and between your team's day-to-day reality and leadership's strategic intent.

Performance Mandate:
You are fully accountable for the performance of the PPC function:

• Profit, revenue, ROAS, and pacing across all verticals and brands

• Budget allocation and forecasting at the vertical level

• Channel innovation: new campaign types, platform features, AI-enabled testing, automation

• Vertical-specific playbooks built in partnership with Product, PMM, SEO, Social, CRM, and Analytics

• QA, governance, and measurement integrity that protect spend and brand standards

• Executive reporting that ties PPC results to business outcomes, not just channel metrics

Technical and Strategic Depth:
You bring real expertise across the full PPC stack: account architecture, bidding strategy, audience design, creative testing, attribution, cross-channel integration, and platform-level mechanics on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and adjacent platforms. You can articulate a campaign-level vision, and you can also open the platform and work in it directly.
You think in systems. You see how PPC interacts with SEO, paid social, lifecycle, and product, and you actively shape that integration rather than waiting for it to be assigned.

Data agility is part of the craft here. The team works in Python regularly to pull, shape, and analyze data at the speed the business needs. We don't expect every candidate to walk in fluent on day one. We have an internal Confluence-based training path the whole team has been through, and what used to take roughly a year of self-teaching now takes about two weeks. What we do expect is the appetite and the aptitude to build that capability quickly. Data agility is foundational to how this team operates and how we stay ahead of the work.

Leading the Team:
You lead six PPC managers spanning three levels. Your job is to develop strategic thinkers, not just task-doers.

• You coach as much as you manage. Each direct report should be visibly developing under you. You calibrate challenge and support to the level in front of you.

• Career growth is part of the deliverable. You know each person's aspirations and you actively help build the path forward.

• Culture is part of the deliverable. The team's tone, sense of ownership, and pride in the work all reflect your leadership.

• Operational familiarity matters. You know the routines, platforms, dashboards, recurring meetings, reporting cadences, and process details that keep this team moving. That familiarity is what lets you support people well and notice early when something needs attention.

Coherence and Alignment Across Levels:
The function works best when alignment cascades cleanly from organization, to Director, to you, to your managers, to their ICs. Helping hold that coherence is a core part of your job.

• You notice when things begin to drift and address it before it grows

• You translate strategic intent into role clarity, priorities, and operating rhythms your team can act on

• You bring the same discipline cross-functionally, so PPC's part of any shared project lands cleanly

• You raise gaps early (resourcing, tooling, alignment) so the Director can clear the blocker or escalate it

• You bring structure where there's ambiguity. Operating standards, testing frameworks, communication norms, and handoff protocols all improve under your leadership.
  

Qualifications

• 7+ years in digital marketing, with at least 3 years leading PPC teams

• Demonstrated ownership of multi-brand, multi-vertical portfolios at meaningful scale

• Experience marketing to B2B audiences, ideally alongside B2C

• Comfort operating in regulated industries, where compliance shapes what's possible at the campaign and creative level

• Deep platform expertise across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and cross-channel attribution

• Strong analytical foundation: Excel and Sheets fluency required; Python proficiency expected (we'll get you there quickly if you're not already), Looker Studio or Power BI a plus

• Track record of building and developing PPC managers, not just specialists

• Working knowledge of SEO, lifecycle, and paid social sufficient to integrate PPC into the broader mix

• Proven project management and operational discipline

What Success Looks Like:

Success in this role means turning strategy into consistent, scalable performance—while building a team that can sustain and grow it.

In your first 90 days:

• You understand each vertical’s performance drivers and constraints

• You’ve established trust, clear priorities, and strong operating rhythms

• You’ve identified and begun addressing key gaps in performance and alignment

Within 6 months:

• Performance is stable and improving across revenue, ROAS, and pacing

• Clear vertical strategies and testing frameworks are in place

• Your team is operating with greater consistency, ownership, and rigor

Within 12 months:

• The PPC function runs as a high-performing, scalable system

• Forecasting, budgeting, and reporting are accurate and tied to business outcomes

• Innovation and cross-functional alignment are embedded in how the team operates

• Your team is stronger, more autonomous, and actively developing

Success ultimately looks like a function that runs with clarity, accountability, and momentum—and a team that’s growing alongside it

This is a fully remote position, but candidates must live in the East Cost time zone and be able to work without sponsorship. We have a starting base pay that will be between $125,000 - $135,000 per year and will also be eligible for up to a 10% annual performance bonus.

EEO Statement: Certus provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.