Senior Client Account Director (SEO) in Preston

About Merj

Merj is a deeply technical SEO and AEO partner to global enterprise clients, engineering platforms, data and technology for meaningful performance. We shape resilient, discoverable platforms designed for good bots, search engines, and customers alike.

Engineered advantage: We find and implement hidden advantages that others miss to give our clients a clear edge.

Future-ready leadership: We actively experiment, test, and adapt to emerging search and AI technologies.

Strategic clarity: We make sense of complexity to define clear paths for growth.

The role

We're looking for a Senior Account Director to lead a portfolio of global enterprise clients. You will be the day-to-day point of contact for client relationships, the person responsible for keeping engagements healthy and growing, and the connective tissue between consulting, R&D, and growth. This is a hands-on role. You'll run accounts, shape roadmaps, offer strategic input, keep delivery on track, and make sure the work we ship reflects Merj's standards.

What you'll do

• Account management and retention
  • Manage relationships across a portfolio of enterprise accounts.
  • Hold the retention number for your portfolio.
  • Work closely with our SEO & AEO Director and Growth Director on new opportunities, renewals, commercials, and SOWs.
  • Work with our SEO & AEO Director, Ops Director and Growth Director to maintain and improve relationship scores across your portfolio.
  • Build account plans that reflect the client's commercial goals, not just our scope of work.
• Project and delivery management
  • Work alongside our lead consultants and project manager on day-to-day tasks, delivery, and quality management.
  • Keep scope, timeline, and quality in balance across every active workstream.
  • Set up the right rituals for each account including standups, working sessions, reporting cadences, async updates.
  • Spot risks early and resolve them before they become escalations.
  • Use Jira, Notion, and our internal SOPs to keep everything visible and accountable.
• Consulting and craft
  • Translate client business goals into plans of work.
  • Develop clear and actionable reverse briefs.
  • Work with our consultants to apply Merj's research and tooling to client problems.
  • Pressure-test recommendations before they reach the client.

What we're looking for

• Must have
  • Significant agency or consultancy experience leading global enterprise accounts.
  • A track record of retaining and growing major clients over multi-year engagements.
  • Experience working with clients in high-competition verticals such as retail, ecommerce, travel, financial services, fintech, and media.
  • Strong project management instincts. You can run a complex program without losing the thread.
  • Deep understanding of digital marketing across organic, paid, content, analytics, and lifecycle.
  • Solid working knowledge of SEO. You don't need to be the most technical person in the room, but you need to hold your own with technical SEO and engineering teams.
  • Exposure to AEO, LLM-driven search, or AI visibility work.
  • Comfort working with senior client stakeholders, including legal, procurement, and C-suite.
  • Clear written and verbal communication. You can write a sharp email, a clean status update, and a useful exec summary.
  • Exposure to commercial models common in consultancy work, including retainers, fixed fee, and time and materials.
• Nice to have
  • Familiarity with tools such as Jira, Notion, GA4, GSC, or Profound.
  • Experience leading international or multi-market programs across multiple regions and time zones.
  • Experience with site migrations, replatforming, or working with headless and JS-heavy stacks.
  • Experience working with US-based clients and stakeholders.
  • A network in the SEO, digital, or marketing community, whether through speaking, writing, or community involvement.
  • Project management qualifications such as PRINCE2 or Agile/Scrum certifications.

How you work

• You learn new frameworks and ways of working quickly, and you adapt rather than force-fit what worked before.
• You bring lessons from past roles into the work without making everything sound like the last place you were at.
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and you make decisions with incomplete information.
• You give and take feedback directly.
• You care about craft. You'd rather ship something good and slightly late than something average on time.

Attitude & Behaviours

• You thrive in a high-trust environment and bring:
• Ownership and accountability: You deliver on commitments and raise risks early.
• Precision: You define problems clearly, work from evidence, and communicate trade-offs.
• Curiosity and experimentation: You test ideas, run controlled experiments, and learn quickly.
• Collaborative delivery: You work well across disciplines and can lead working groups to get outcomes shipped.
• Clear communication: You write and speak with clarity, and can explain complex topics to non-specialists.

Benefits

Merj is a welcoming, collaborative, and rewarding workspace where you will work with some of the best technical SEO experts in the world and your ideas and work will shape how we grow. We invest in meaningful work, deep client relationships, and doing things the right way. In addition to competitive remuneration, here’s what you can expect as part of the Merj team:

• Annual Bonus: Performance-based bonus scheme to reward your contribution when we hit our profit targets.
• Health Cash Plan: Membership to help with everyday healthcare costs, including coverage for your children.
• Remote Working: Flexibility to work remotely as standard.
• Enhanced Leave For Tenure: 25 days plus bank holidays as standard, and your holiday allowance increases the longer you’re with us.
• Revolut Membership: Premium membership giving you access to a suite of lifestyle benefits, including global travel and cancellation insurance, airmiles and airport lounge access, and 3GB of monthly travel data.
• Conference or Volunteering Day: Dedicated time to attend industry conferences or volunteer for causes you care about.
• Holiday Purchase & Carryover Leave: Option to buy additional holiday days if you need more time off, or carry over unused holiday to the next year.
• Enhanced sick pay beyond statutory requirements.

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and supported. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic. If you need any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know, and we will be happy to accommodate.