Associate Director, SEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

VML · Kansas City, Missouri, United States

  • Junior
  • Full-time
  • Posted 2026-08-27
  • Confirmed live on 25 September 2026

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Job description

Who We Are

VML is a global creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce to create connected brands that drive growth. Guided by a Human First philosophy, VML is known for its innovative work for brands and consistently ranks among the world’s leading creative companies, including the WARC Creative 100. VML’s global network spans 55+ markets with principal offices in Buenos Aires, Kansas City, London, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai and Singapore.

VML is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.

For more information, please visit www.vml.com and follow along on  LinkedIn #WeAreVML.

Associate Director, SEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

As the Associate Director, SEO, you will help deliver cutting-edge, high-quality search and generative engine optimization (GEO) work that is customized to specific goals. Working within our Discoverability group in support of a major enterprise client, the focus will be to drive brand visibility inside AI-generated answers as well as traditional search results, using the client's brand visibility platform. The ability to manage multiple workstreams across products, sub-brands, languages and markets in a complex enterprise environment will be critical to the success of this role. This includes facilitating strategy workshops, building and expanding prompt sets, briefing content gaps, and running the post-launch optimization loop to ensure VML delivers a holistic, inclusive approach for all client needs.

What you'll do

Workshop facilitation. Lead structured strategy sessions with client marketing and product stakeholders to set categories, map content frameworks to their product and launch calendar, and produce an initial prompt set ready for import into the brand visibility platform. You must be comfortable running this both solo and as a co-facilitator alongside the client's own team.

Content gap briefing. Translate the content framework output into actionable content briefs the client's own team can execute, identifying what owned content already exists, what is missing, and what must be created for each product launch. You will need to write a brief engineered for LLM visibility, not just SEO hygiene.

Prompt strategy development and expansion. Build and structure prompt sets that scale, growing prompt depth across products, languages, sub-brands and markets over time. Apply the distinction between branded and unbranded prompt coverage, funnel mapping, and intent balance as defined by the content framework matrix.

Post-launch optimization loop management. Return after deployment to review uplift in the platform, refresh the prompt set, identify new gaps, and coach the client through an ongoing GEO optimization cadence. Success is measured by prompt list growth and CDN page activation, not deliverable count.

Product fluency and platform credibility. Complete hands-on work in the platform environment and the client's reference training sessions before any client-facing engagement. Be credible enough in the platform to facilitate a live in-session gap review with the client, and confident enough in GEO fundamentals to hold the room in a co-branded facilitation context without misrepresenting the tool's native capabilities.

Foundational SEO expertise. Bring expert-level understanding and application of technical, on-page, off-page, mobile, local, international and e-commerce SEO, and use it as the substrate for GEO recommendations. Common supporting deliverables include SEO and content audits, keyword and entity research, competitive analyses, technical SEO consultation, on-page optimization, content development workflow support, off-page asset optimization, and analysis and reporting.

Strategic leadership. Think beyond tactical execution to deliver high-level strategic recommendations for custom-tailored, best-in-class discoverability work, and develop and consult on efforts that provide tangible results against previously defined goals. Lead projects of all sizes and take an active role in growing the business within the engagement.

Category currency. Stay current on the latest SEO and GEO tooling, evolving LLM retrieval and citation behavior, reporting capabilities, and industry voices to help keep VML at the forefront. Proactively keep clients, client counterparts and internal VML teams informed on current trends and changes.

Cross-discipline collaboration. Work with Paid Search and Performance Content team members to support Discoverability initiatives and maximize overall impact. Maintain a solid understanding of holistic integrated media tactics alongside organic search, including paid search, social media, mobile marketing, PR and analytics, and be prepared to leverage these dis

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