Senior PPC Specialist (AI-Native Search)

We do not run ads by hand. We build the systems that run them.

About the role

Google Ads at Groupon is one of the largest local-commerce search books anywhere: Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Things to Do, Hotel Ads and Demand Gen across North America and 11 international markets, with Microsoft Ads on the same split. Manual optimization stopped being an advantage here a while ago. You will join a team of some of the best search specialists in the world and an army of AI agents: the agents pace the budgets, check every account, score the value of every category and shadow-test bidding logic before it is allowed to act; the people decide what the agents should do next. The question in this role is not whether search gets automated. It is what paid search becomes when AI Max and agentic buying arrive, and you will help answer it with real budgets.

Who you will work with

You report to the SEM Lead, who owns Brand and Non-Brand search across all markets. You work with the international search team, the PLA and Automation team that builds the shared tooling, Analytics and Finance, and directly with Google and Microsoft.

What you will be doing

• Own accounts in the North American Non-Brand and Shopping book: structure, bidding logic, budgets and feeds, so that performance scales without a proportional increase in manual work.
• Bid on value, not clicks: apply our per-category forward-value models to the accounts, measure the lift, and extend the method.
• Build automation that runs without you: Google Ads Scripts, the Ads API, Python and our AI agent toolset. Replace manual bid changes, pacing checks and anomaly hunting with tools the whole team can call.
• AI Search readiness: run and evaluate AI Max, Demand Gen and Performance Max, take part in our pilots on new AI surfaces, and form the team's view on agentic buying.
• Feed and Merchant Center quality: build the visibility on feed health, disapprovals and coverage, and act on it.
• Retargeting: run Criteo and similar platforms on the same margin logic as search.
• Connect spend to business outcomes: return, acquisition cost, contribution margin and lifetime value, and explain your decisions to a non-PPC audience.

What this role demands

• Google Ads depth across campaign types, not just Search: you can explain why a Performance Max asset group underperforms and what to do about it.
• Budgets at meaningful scale, hundreds of thousands of euros a month at minimum, ideally in-house at an e-commerce or marketplace business where you owned the outcome.
• Hands-on Google Ads Scripts or Ads API work: you have written or modified code that automated something real. Python is a strong plus.
• You have a passion for AI transformation: you have tried it hands-on before, in your personal life or at work, and you are keen to learn.
• You can connect spend decisions to return, acquisition cost and lifetime value and explain them to Finance.
• Structured problem-solving under ambiguity: when performance drops, you have a diagnostic process, not just a reaction.
• English fluent. Based in Czechia, Poland or Spain, remote.

Internal mapping (HR and Talent Acquisition only: remove this section before posting)

Online Marketing Specialist II (Grade 5), Annual Bonus Plan 10 percent. Greenhouse requisition R30006. Posted title: Senior PPC Specialist (AI-Native Search).

How we operate

• Extreme Ownership. You find the problem before someone escalates it, and you own the fix, not just the investigation.
• Impact Obsessed. Platform metrics matter only when they connect to contribution margin and new customers. If ROAS is up and activations are flat, raise it.
• Speed Over Comfort. Priorities shift. The right response to uncertainty is a decision with the information available, not a request for more time.
• AI-first, for real. We encourage candidates to use AI tools during the hiring process where it adds value, and we will ask you to show how you did. The case study is graded on what you built, not on what you say about AI.