Senior Director, Media

Overview

We're looking for a senior media leader to lead one of the largest growth levers at Instacart. This role will own media strategy, budget optimization, and channel execution for full funnel media across an array of channels from traditional linear TV  to the latest online platforms. This is a high-impact role for a strategic, results-driven leader who can deliver on aggressive growth goals for a multi-sided marketplace business.

About the Job

• Own the global media budget for Instacart, ensuring optimal allocation and ROI across media channels for both consumer and B2B2C. 
• Align media strategy with ambitious B2C and B2B business objectives and long-range planning, navigating complex collaborations across brand, product, and creative teams. 
• Define the in-house media agency strategy for our retail media network business. 
• Build, mentor, and inspire a high-performing in-house team rooted in strategic thinking, executional excellence, and continuous innovation while advancing our resourcing model to leverage AI and human talent (both in-house and external) to their fullest potential.
• Promote a culture of systems thinking, orchestrating seamless cross-functional alignment and operational rigor between  marketing, product, finance, and data teams. 
• Champion the systems and tooling required for velocity, quality, and scalable growth: Leverage marketing science, audience insights, and media mix modeling to inform targeting, optimize spend, and improve media effectiveness. Partner with Finance, Data Science, Analytics, and MarTech to advance media measurement, targeting, and spend optimization.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of leadership experience managing full funnel consumer media strategy and execution with large working budgets across US and Canada. 
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to align diverse stakeholders and lead through influence at all levels.
• Deep fluency in performance measurement, including MMM, attribution models, A/B testing, and forecasting with demonstrated experience collaborating with data science, analytics, product, and MarTech teams to drive impact.
• Experience leading embedded agency teams and internal marketers with clarity, urgency, and high expectations.
• Experience leveraging AI and a strong willingness to learn and experiment with AI-driven and agent-based systems to achieve successful full-funnel marketing at scale.
• An expert in both the art and science of media, encompassing creative alignment, campaign planning, channel orchestration, and experimentation. You challenge conventional "best practices," recognize pseudo-science, and take calculated risks to innovate.
• An innovator in the media space with a strong track record of bold strategic initiatives and continuous improvement driven by rigorous experimentation.
• Bias for action and operational rigor—moves quickly, structures clearly, and executes consistently.

Preferred Qualifications

• Preference for experience in retail, consumer tech, and/or marketplace businesses
• Experience with Retail Media Networks and/or B2B2C media buying. 

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