Technical Search Director Contractor (11-week contract)

LONDON, UK (Hybrid Working - 2-3 days in the office per week)

Day rate : £288

Working pattern : 4 days per week

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Croud is a global, full service digital marketing agency with a unique business model that helps businesses drive sustainable growth in the new world of marketing. Croud was recently named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the second year in a row, and was named Performance Marketing Employer of the Year by PMW.

At Croud, we unlock potential by elevating our people, clients, and communities within a rapidly advancing and complex economy. We operate as a unique scaled network of Intelligent, Creative Specialists, enabling us to deliver superior brand outcomes and unlock potential for our people, our clients and our communities.

Our culture is strategically driven and inspired by a shared long-term vision. It is collaborative and connected, with a focus on continuous learning and mutual support.

We are energised by future thinking, driving innovation to achieve better outcomes. We are instinctively generous, actively including and empowering our people. Above all, we are purpose-driven, committed to positively impacting our people, the planet, and our global communities.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are looking for an experienced Technical Search Director Contractor for 6 weeks to lead the strategic direction, operational excellence, and technical delivery of Croud’s Web Experience and Technical SEO capability, ensuring client websites are optimised for modern search discovery, AI chat engines, and technical performance across the Organic Performance portfolio.

You will serve as Croud’s interim senior technical authority on Web Experience and Technical SEO workstreams. This is a specialist director role that combines expert-level, hands-on technical execution with cross-departmental leadership and agency-wide capability development.

Reporting into the Head of Organic Strategy, you will work in close alignment with Croud’s Organic Strategy teams to audit, architect, and roadmap technical SEO improvements designed for next-generation search. You will ensure client websites are fully crawlable, accessible, and structured for maximum content extraction, not only for traditional search engines, but also for AI summaries and conversational LLM interfaces. Acting as the vital bridge between SEO strategy and technical delivery, you will partner directly with client web development teams to translate audits into clear, actionable code specifications and tickets, while serving as the senior point of expertise on technical projects such as site migrations and platform rebuilds.

RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Technical SEO & New-Age Search Strategy

• Advanced Web Auditing: Lead end-to-end technical site audits, identifying structural obstacles, rendering issues, and optimisation opportunities to enhance site usability, speed, and indexing efficiency. With experience with Apache configuration files (redirects) and knowledge of CLI (command-line interface) tools.

• Next-Gen Search Optimisation: Architect technical strategies tailored for modern search ecosystems, ensuring client websites are optimised for crawlability, accessibility, and content extraction across traditional search, AI summaries, and generative AI chat experiences.

• Semantic & Structural Design: Oversee structured data schema implementation, semantic HTML, site architecture, and rendering optimisation (client-side, server-side, dynamic rendering) to maximise machine understanding.

• Performance & Core Web Vitals: Oversee front-end web performance analysis, leveraging tools like Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and WebPageTest to drive Core Web Vitals compliance.

2. Developer Engagement & Execution

• Actionable Ticketing: Translate complex technical audit findings into clear, digestible, developer-ready specifications and tickets (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps) that client engineering teams can seamlessly implement.

• Developer Advocacy: Work directly with client web developers, frontend engineers, and technical architects to communicate requirements, align on standards (W3C, WCAG), and validate implemented fixes.

• Front-End & Code Expertise: Apply strong knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to debug complex front-end SEO issues, client-side frameworks, and DOM manipulation challenges.

3. Technical Project Leadership

• Site Migrations: Serve as the senior lead on technically heavy projects, including site migrations, platform rebuilds, re-architectures, and international rollouts, protecting baseline traffic and mitigating operational risk.

• Technical Roadmapping: Formulate and manage robust technical roadmaps for key accounts, scoping accurate effort requirements and resource allocation.

• Escalation & Technical Resolution: Serve as the senior point of escalation for complex technical issues, indexing emergencies, or performance drops across the Organic client portfolio.

4. Proposition Operationalisation & Innovation

• Evolving the Proposition: Continuously modernise Croud’s Web Experience methodology with improved processes and agentic workflows to integrate emerging web technologies, generative AI search behaviours, and evolving search engine guidelines, whilst driving efficiency in delivery.

• Test & Learn: Lead regular "Test & Learn" technical initiatives to evaluate new tools, web standards, and indexing patterns, turning insights into client strategies.

• Case Studies & Thought Leadership: Produce high-quality case studies and whitepapers that showcase Croud’s technical SEO innovation and elevate the agency’s profile in the market.

5. Growth & Capability Development

• New Business & Growth: Support sales and pitch initiatives by delivering high-impact technical audits, pitch inputs, and solution design on complex technical opportunities.

• Croudie Network Management: Oversee brief quality, project management, and quality control for work assigned to specialist on-demand network experts.

• Upskilling & Mentorship: Provide ongoing training, mentorship, and technical guidance to Web Experience Managers and the wider Organic Performance team.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

• Extensive experience in Technical SEO within an agency environment.

• Expert knowledge of Technical SEO best practice, site migrations and web performance optimisation.

• Strong understanding of AI search, emerging search technologies and the evolving search landscape.

• Confident working with developers and translating technical recommendations into actionable solutions.

• Commercially minded with excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.

• Proven experience leading technical teams and driving capability development across a business.

COMPANY BENEFITS

Croud operates a hybrid working model with a minimum of 2-3 days a week based in our London office and the remaining days from home if you wish.

Standard hours are from 9.00am to 5.30pm, there’s flexibility if agreed in advance with your line managers (it may also be necessary on occasions to work outside of these hours).

Croud is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the grounds of a person's gender, marital status, race, religion, colour, age, disability or sexual orientation. All candidates will be assessed based on merit, qualifications and their ability to perform the requirements of the role.

OUR VALUES

At Croud, our vision centres around the idea of unlocking potential. We do this by elevating everyone in an inclusive and progressive culture, empowering individuals to deliver their best work. This means we build better brand outcomes, and unlock potential for our people, our clients and our communities.

We live and breathe five core values that foster a culture where everyone can thrive. Our commitment to elevating each other is fundamental to both our cultural and business success. The ideal candidate will excel in and demonstrate the following:

• In it together - our value on integration, collaboration and outcomes

• Eye on the future - our value on futurism, creativity and passion

• Generous in spirit - our value on people, development and inclusion

• Do what you say - our value on integrity and accountability

• Make a difference - our value on purpose and impact