Paid Search Manager

Overview

About Skillshare

Skillshare is the leading learning community for creatives. With more than 30,000 expert-led classes in illustration, design, photography, video, marketing, and more, Skillshare empowers anyone, anywhere to learn new skills, share expertise, and unlock their creative potential.

Hundreds of thousands of member subscribers around the world come to Skillshare to discover new passions, advance careers, and connect with an inspiring community of teachers and peers.

Backed by top investors including Newspring Capital, OMERS Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, our mission is to build the world’s most thriving creative learning community.

We’re looking for a data-driven and strategic Paid Search Manager to own and optimize our campaigns across the Google Ads portfolio. Reporting to the Performance Marketing Lead, you will be responsible for driving profitable growth and maximizing subscription volume at an efficient CAC. This role sits at the core of our growth engine, requiring a deep understanding of campaign management, data analysis, and cross-functional collaboration to drive subscriptions and improve conversion rates across the funnel. You will be responsible for strategy, execution, and reporting, making data-driven decisions to scale our paid search efforts effectively.

• Manage and optimize campaigns across the full Google Ads portfolio, including Search, PMax, YouTube, Video Action, and others.
• Lead keyword strategy and bidding across both branded and non-branded queries to maximize subscription volume at an efficient CAC.
• Run a disciplined test-and-learn program across bidding, targeting, and funnel variations, and partner with internal data teams to evolve dashboards that surface actionable insights.
• Drive Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) initiatives within your channels by working cross-functionally with engineering and design to develop, implement, and maintain a testing roadmap.
• Monitor campaign performance, generate actionable insights from data, and communicate data-driven decisions to key stakeholders.
• Stay current on Google Ads and performance marketing trends, platform changes, privacy regulations, attribution strategies, and AI-powered search features to maximize performance.

• Experience: You have 3+ years of hands-on experience managing SEM and running PPC campaigns in Google Ads, ideally in a fast-paced environment like a subscription business or an agency.
• Data-driven mindset: You have fluency in campaign data analysis and optimization, with proficiency in Google Sheets, cohort analysis, and ROAS modeling. You have a proven ability to translate numbers into actions.
• Platform Expertise: You have a strong understanding of search and Google-owned ad placements, including Search, PMax, YouTube, App Campaigns, and Demand Gen.
• Cross-functional collaborator: You have the ability to work effectively with product, web, creative, and analytics teams to optimize acquisition performance from end to end.
• Excellent communicator: You can translate complex insights into clear decisions and communicate effectively to stakeholders within and outside of the marketing team.
• Strategic owner: You are comfortable owning strategy, execution, and reporting, and are curious, commercially aware, and comfortable making quick decisions.
• Mission alignment: You’re excited by Skillshare’s vision of building the world’s most thriving creative learning community.

• Experience with other performance marketing channels such as Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit and others.
• Experience with international markets outside of the US or managing global accounts.
• Experience within startup or scale-up environments.
• Experience working with ed-tech or subscription based companies.

At Skillshare, we believe creativity thrives in an inclusive environment. We’re excited to meet candidates from all backgrounds and experiences. If you’re passionate about what we do but don’t check every single box, we’d still love to hear from you — curiosity and growth matter most to us.