Roles we recruit
Seven practices, 27 functions. Start at the practice when you cannot yet name the title; go straight to the function when you can.
Browse all 229 roles Brief us on a seatFlat 15% of first-year base · shortlist in 10 working days
Ten seats sit under search, and the newest two did not have job titles three years ago. We split them by the part of search visibility each one owns, from crawlable pages to citations in AI answers, screen for revenue moved rather than rankings, and charge a flat 15% only once your hire starts.
Most search briefs ask for an SEO and mean one of four different jobs: technical repair, content growth, local visibility or AI answers. We start with which one is broken.
The search visibility motion, and the seat that owns each stage
Moves: pages crawled, indexed and fast
1 seat
Crawling, indexation, rendering, site speed, structured data and migrations: the plumbing that decides whether search engines can use your pages at all.
Brief us when pages are not indexed, traffic fell after a redesign or migration, or the site is big enough that crawl budget matters.
Moves: non-branded clicks on pages that convert
2 seats
Day-to-day organic work: keyword research, on-page optimization, internal links, briefs for writers and the reporting that shows what moved.
Brief us when you have content and a site that should rank, and nobody doing the steady work that makes it rank.
Hire an SEO SpecialistWhich topics to own and in what order: search demand analysis, content architecture, competitive gaps and a plan tied to your buyers.
Brief us when you publish plenty and none of it compounds, because nobody decided which searches you are trying to win.
Hire an SEO StrategistMoves: map pack visibility and location enquiries
1 seat
Visibility for location-based searches: business profiles, citations, reviews, location pages and map pack rankings.
Brief us when your buyers search by city or service area, or you run several locations that each need to be found.
Moves: mentions and citations in AI answers
3 seats
Answer engine optimization: structuring content so it is used for direct answers, featured snippets, voice and AI Overviews, with clear entities and sources.
Brief us when searches in your category now end on the results page or in an AI answer, and yours is not the content being quoted.
Generative engine optimization: how often assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini mention and cite your brand, and the content, PR and data work that changes it.
Brief us when buyers ask AI assistants for vendor shortlists and your company is missing from the answers.
Measurement and testing across AI search surfaces: prompt tracking, citation monitoring, structured data and the experiments that connect them to traffic and pipeline.
Brief us when you need someone to measure AI visibility properly before anyone decides what to change.
Moves: organic pipeline and share of search
3 seats
The organic channel as a revenue line: strategy, roadmap, budget, the specialists or agency, and the case to leadership for what search needs.
Brief us when organic is a material source of pipeline and needs an owner who can win resources from product and engineering.
Search for large or complex sites: many templates, several products or regions, governance across teams and changes shipped through a release process.
Brief us when your site has tens of thousands of pages or several publishing teams, and SEO changes need a program, not a ticket.
The path from search result to conversion: landing experience, page templates, on-site search and the handoff between SEO, content and product.
Brief us when you rank and get clicks, but searchers leave before they convert.
Measured on
Search candidates arrive with screenshots of traffic going up and to the right. We screen for what sits underneath: pipeline from organic, recommendations that actually shipped, and how they are adapting as more searches end in an AI answer.
We ask for organic sessions, conversions and pipeline over the same period, and which pages produced them. Ranking reports on their own are where we dig.
Candidates audit a section of a real site in our screen: what they would fix first, what they would leave and why. Technical candidates also walk us through a migration they ran.
We ask how they measure brand mentions and citations in AI answers today, and what they changed when clicks fell on queries that an AI Overview now answers.
SEO only works when developers and writers act on it. We ask what share of their recommendations shipped and check it with an engineering or content lead they worked with.
Not sure which seat you need? Tell us what changed in your organic numbers and when, and we will tell you which of the ten owns it.
Public US benchmarks, read October 2026. Published pay data for search roles is thin and mostly self-reported, and there is no public benchmark yet for AEO or GEO titles, so read these as a floor and a frame rather than a price list.
Each bar runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile, the middle half of reported pay.
Base salaryWages including commission (BLS)Median base salaryAverage total pay, base plus variable
SEO Specialist
Built In, self-reported
$50,000 median base$60,901 average total
SEO Manager
Built In, self-reported
$75,000 median base$89,385 average total
Technical SEO Specialist
Salary.com, entry-level benchmark
$73,590 to $92,090 base
Marketing specialists
BLS, a category that includes SEO
$58,350 to $108,310
SEO Specialist and SEO Manager: Built In median base salary and average total compensation, self-reported, reviewed September 28, 2026. Technical SEO Specialist: Salary.com base salary benchmark for an entry-level technical SEO and PPC specialist, United States, as of October 1, 2026. Marketing specialists: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, annual wage at the 25th and 75th percentiles (SOC 13-1161), all industries. Public aggregates, not ZaphyrRecruit placement data.
The clock starts when the brief is signed and stops when three to five calibrated candidates are in front of you. Most of that time is spent talking to people, not searching for them.
Day 1
Forty-five minutes with whoever the hire reports to. We leave with the number the seat owns, the range you can pay and the two or three things that genuinely disqualify.
Days 2 to 7
We build the list from people doing the job now, approach them directly and screen every name against the brief before it reaches you.
Days 8 to 10
Three to five people, each with a page: what they have run, why they fit this seat, pay expectations, notice period and where they are weak.
After the shortlist
Interviews run at your pace. We handle scheduling, references and the counter-offer conversation, and nothing is payable until your hire starts.
Three clients, quoted as they wrote to us about searches we ran for them. We publish no names or logos without permission.
SEO earns rankings and clicks in classic search results. AEO, answer engine optimization, structures content so it is used for direct answers, featured snippets and AI Overviews. GEO, generative engine optimization, works on how often AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity mention and cite your brand. They overlap heavily: the same content, entities and authority signals feed all three.
We charge a flat 15% of the hire’s first-year base salary, payable only once they start. On a $90,000 base that is $13,500. There is no retainer, no exclusivity and nothing to pay if the search does not produce a hire.
Self-reported data on Built In puts the median base for SEO specialists at $50,000 and for SEO managers at $75,000, with average total compensation of $60,901 and $89,385 (September 2026). Senior, technical and B2B software roles sit well above those medians, and the BLS band for marketing specialists, a category that includes SEO, runs $58,350 to $108,310 at the 25th to 75th percentile.
An agency gives you breadth and tools quickly. An in-house SEO gives you someone who can get changes shipped through your own engineering and content teams, which is where most SEO programs stall. Many companies keep an agency for specialist work and hire one in-house owner to set priorities and push changes through. We recruit the in-house seat.
Not always. If your SEO lead already measures AI visibility and adjusts content for it, a separate seat can wait. A dedicated AEO or GEO specialist earns their place when buyers in your category rely on AI assistants for vendor shortlists, or when you need someone to build the measurement before anyone decides what to change.
Ten working days from a signed brief to a shortlist of three to five calibrated candidates. Interviews and the offer then run at your pace. A short practical exercise sits inside our screen, so your interview time goes on judgment rather than on checking the basics.
With a live audit of part of a real site, a conversation about a migration or replatforming they ran end to end, and a check with an engineer who implemented their recommendations. The crawling, rendering and structured data questions come from practitioners, not from a keyword list.
Tell us what changed in organic, how big the site is and who ships the fixes. We reply within one business day with which of the ten seats it is and what it pays.
Most of our search and content roles are filled from people we already know, the week an employer briefs us. Set up a job alert for marketing roles, or send your CV and we will come to you when a seat opens.
SEO, AEO and GEO sit in our Demand, Search & Content practice. Search rarely works alone: the content, the website and the demand team decide what organic visibility is worth.