Senior Manager, Paid Media (Growth)

What you’ll be doing

This role sits at the centre of driving end-to-end growth through a highly optimised, data-led paid media function. You’ll shape and execute a full-funnel strategy, using experimentation, AI and automation to continuously improve performance, while working closely with cross-functional teams to deliver measurable commercial outcomes.

• Define and lead a full-funnel paid media strategy across Search (SA360), Social (meta, TikTok), Programmatic (DV360, Criteo, RTB House), Video on demand, and ATL
• Continuously evolve strategies based on insights, not opinions
• Manage how the paid media budget is deployed to drive maximum incremental impact
• Identify and prioritise the highest-leverage growth opportunities across channels, audiences, and the customer journey
• Build and drive a rigorous experimentation roadmap, focused on what actually moves the needle
• Leverage AI and automation to scale performance, efficiency, and insight generation across paid media
• Identify opportunities to apply AI across bidding and budget allocation, creative generation and testing at scale, audience modelling and expansion, and predictive performance and forecasting
• Partner with data and engineering teams to unlock first-party data and machine learning capabilities
• Partner with Marketing Automation, Data, and Product teams to activate CDP audiences across paid channels, improving targeting, suppression, retargeting and lifecycle-based acquisition.
• Use data to make clear, confident decisions on where to scale, optimise, or stop investment
• Challenge assumptions, push for better, and hold a high bar for performance
• Work cross-functionally with product, marketing automation, brand, creative, and data teams to unlock end-to-end growth
• Lead and develop a high-performing team, setting clear direction and standards

What we’re looking for

• Proven track record of scaling paid media investment while simultaneously improving efficiency, demonstrating a strong understanding of how to balance growth, cost and incremental impact across channels
• Deep platform expertise across SA360, DV360, Meta and other major paid channels, with a clear view of how to optimise each platform and what high-performance execution looks like
• Strong analytical capability, with the ability to cut through complex and often noisy data to identify the true drivers of growth and make confident, high-quality decisions
• Experience leveraging experimentation frameworks and performance insights to continuously refine strategy, optimise outcomes and unlock new growth opportunities
• Exposure to, or strong interest in, AI, automation and modern growth tooling, with an ability to translate emerging capabilities into practical improvements in performance, efficiency and scale
• Demonstrated experience leading specialist teams and agency partners, setting a high performance bar and driving accountability to deliver best-in-class outcomes
• Highly collaborative leadership style, with the ability to work effectively across Marketing, Product, Data and Technology to deliver integrated, end-to-end growth
• Strong commercial and growth mindset, with a clear focus on impact, trade-offs and ROI, and the ability to connect media performance to broader business outcomes

A few other things we want you to know...

• As an equal opportunity employer, carsales welcomes applications from individuals of all backgrounds, identities, abilities, and life experiences. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and supported.
• If you have a disability or require adjustments to participate fully in the recruitment process, please let us know - we’re here to support you.
• We understand the importance of work-life balance and offer flexible working arrangements, including part-time options. If you’d like to explore this, just ask during the process.
• We’re also a proud Circle Back Initiative employer, which means we commit to responding to every applicant.

• Successful candidates joining the carsales team will need to complete a National Police Record check and must have full-time Australian working rights.

So come join us - because every role plays a vital part in our journey toward something big!