SEO Team Manager

This is a people-first leadership role where you'll own one of our SEO pods: its people, the quality of its delivery, its client performance, and its revenue. You'll line manage a team of 3 strategists and senior strategists, coach them through complex challenges, and make sure strong work leaves the pod on time.

You'll act as strategy lead for a small number of key accounts, without being fully resourced onto delivery, so you have the space to lead. Reporting to the SEO Team Director, you'll also drive the adoption of AI workflows and systems across your pod, making how we deliver organic search faster, sharper, and more consistent.

People Leadership & Culture

• Line manage a pod of SEO Strategists and Senior Strategists, running one to ones, probation and performance reviews, and development plans
• Coach your team through complex SEO challenges and build a high performing culture where people feel safe to learn and share ideas
• Lead onboarding for new SEO hires

Pod Performance & Delivery

• Own pod performance, including client KPIs, retention, and revenue growth, and spot upsell opportunities
• QA key deliverables, hold work to NOVOS best practice, and step in early on delivery risks and escalations
• Plan resource and workloads so the pod prioritises well and delivers on time

Client Strategy Leadership

• Act as strategy lead for a small number of your pod's key accounts
• Support strategists with quarterly roadmaps and major presentations, and provide senior oversight on escalations and strategic pivots

AI Workflows & Innovation

• Identify where AI workflows and systems can improve quality, speed, and consistency, and roll them out across the pod
• Train the team to use them well, track adoption, and share what works with the wider SEO department
• Stay ahead of the LLM and AI search landscape, turning change into practical guidance

Team Improvement

• Drive consistency in templates, workflows, and processes, and partner with the SEO Team Director on team-wide development initiatives

• A pod that shows clear progression in skills and feedback, with high team happiness and issues resolved early
• Work that consistently meets or exceeds NOVOS standards and is delivered on time
• Pod performance and revenue targets met, with strong retention and stable, trusting client relationships
• AI workflows adopted consistently across the pod, measured by the share of the team and deliverables using them
• Measurable efficiency gains from AI, such as time saved on recurring tasks, with no drop in quality
• New workflows documented and shared beyond your pod, and a united partnership with the SEO Team Director

Experience & Expertise

• Agency, media owner, or client side experience, with a strong track record of delivering eCommerce SEO growth against pre-set KPIs
• Experience managing or mentoring a team (you'll manage a team of 3), even informally
• Strong technical SEO skills, including crawling tools (Screaming Frog, OnCrawl, Sitebulb) and working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JS. Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or headless knowledge is a bonus
• A clear understanding of how and why shoppers search and buy online, and how SEO fits with PPC, email, and social
• A clear understanding of the LLM landscape and how you use LLMs day to day. Experience embedding AI workflows in a team is a plus
• A commercial understanding of budgets and resourcing

Your Approach & Mindset

• You coach first. You naturally develop others and enjoy watching your team grow.
• You take ownership. You're comfortable being accountable for the pod's people, quality, and results.
• You simplify. You turn complex SEO into clear, practical guidance.
• You're forward-thinking. You keep up with industry change and treat experimenting with AI as part of the job.
• You influence through clarity. You build strong relationships with team members and clients without needing to escalate.

You'll join a growing, employee-owned agency ranked as one of the UK's best workplaces. Benefits include:

• Unlimited annual leave
• Annual profit share via our Employee Ownership Trust
• Health cash plan and virtual GP access
• Discounted gyms and wellbeing support
• Hybrid working with flexible hours
• Annual 2-week Christmas closure
• Team socials and cultural events
• Competitive training budget
• Early finish on the last Friday of every month
• Quarterly Personal Care Day and birthday day off
• Charity initiatives with company donations

Our Values

At NOVOS, our values guide everything we do. We're looking for someone who lives them too:

• Sustained Growth: Always learning, always sharing knowledge, and supporting others to grow
• Simplicity: Cutting through jargon and making a complex strategy clear and accessible
• Specialism: Becoming a true expert in eCommerce strategy across platforms and emerging trends
• Stand Out, Be Unique: Bringing individuality and new perspectives to the table
• Service First: Going beyond deliverables to build trust and long-term client partnerships

NOVOS is an eCommerce growth agency specialising in SEO, GEO/AEO, digital PR, and paid media for retail brands around the world. We're employee-owned, which means:

• Everyone has a voice in how we run the business
• We operate with full financial transparency
• Every team member shares in our success through equity and annual profit share

That commitment has been recognised externally as we recently ranked 5th in the UK's Best Workplaces and won a Beacon of Excellence award, one of just 20 agencies nationwide. We work with some of the best brands in the industry, including Osprey, Fred Perry, Watches of Switzerland Group, and TALA, alongside ambitious, high-growth eCommerce businesses. From day one, we've always operated in line with our values, which included selling the business to the staff instead of a corporation and being laser-focused on the clients we work with.