Media Strategy Director in Belfast

We're MXB, an award-winning marketing agency built around brand, strategy, creative and digital. We're looking for a Media Strategy Director to lead our media discipline into its next chapter. This role is for someone who can think in headlines and spreadsheets, treats digital channels as their natural habitat, and is genuinely excited about what AI is doing to our industry.

About MXB: We're a full-service agency based in Belfast, working with brands across Northern Ireland, the Republic, and beyond. Our clients include Musgrave, Centra, SuperValu, Daybreak, and many growing brands. We're proud of our work, having been named Northern Ireland Social Media Agency of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year.

What you'll actually do:

• Lead media strategy across the agency: Own the strategic media product at MXB, set standards, frameworks, and ways of working that define how we plan.
• Lead cross-channel strategy across paid search, paid social, programmatic, video, OTT/CTV, audio, DOOH, and the right slice of offline.
• Build plans that connect to real business outcomes, audience architecture, channel mix, budget allocation, KPIs, and measurement.
• Be the senior strategist in client meetings, simplifying the complex and turning data into a story leadership teams want to act on.
• Run the digital media engine: Provide oversight across all digital media activity, quality, performance, optimisation, and measurement.
• Stay close to platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, trade desks) to challenge specialists constructively and spot changes before clients ask about them.
• Lead our thinking on social-first brand architecture, treating social as the place modern brands are increasingly built.
• Grow our creator network.
• Lead our AI agenda inside media: Set our point of view on AI in media, identify, test, and roll out AI tools that improve work; planning, audience modelling, creative production, optimisation, reporting.
• Build AI literacy across the media team, run sessions, coach people, and create a culture where experimenting with new tools is the default.
• Govern data privacy, client confidentiality, IP, and transparency.
• Be a credible external voice on AI at industry events, in client conversations, and in our content.
• Build and lead a brilliant team: Lead, coach, and grow our team, ensuring people progress and learn faster at MXB than anywhere else.
• Partner with Creative, Strategy, Brand, Social, and Account Leadership so media isn't a silo.
• Play a leading role in new business, pitches, scoping, pricing, and the ways of working that win us the right clients.

What good looks like:

• In your first 90 days: Meet every client and team member, form a clear view on our media product, and start shaping our AI roadmap for media.
• By the end of year one: Our media strategy approach is sharper, more consistent, and visibly better. AI is woven into daily work, with measurable time saved and quality improved.
• Year two and beyond: You're a known voice in media across Ireland and the UK, and the discipline you lead is a reason clients choose and stay with MXB.

About you:

• Experience: Around 6+ years in media, with meaningful time in strategy at an agency.
• Digital depth: You know digital media well and can challenge a programmatic trader or explain attribution to a CMO.
• AI fluency: You're using AI tools in your work and have practical views on their application.
• Strategic instinct: You can find the story in data, thinking in audiences, behaviours, and business outcomes.
• Leadership: People would work for you again; you build teams up rather than burn them out.
• Reach and presence: You bring a network with you, knowing creators, talent managers, and platform partners across Ireland and the UK.
• Social-to-web fluency: You've delivered work where social and website worked as one.
• Client presence: Senior clients trust you and you can simplify the complex.
• Commercial nous: You understand how agencies make money and scope work that's ambitious and profitable.

You'll love it here if...

• You're excited about AI and what it could do for media.
• You want senior responsibility but also want to stay close to the work.
• You like independent agencies for their pace, autonomy, and opportunity to shape something.
• You're a generous collaborator and a confident leader.

It probably isn't for you if...

• You'd rather not get into the detail of a media plan.
• You're looking for a role with a fixed playbook and well-trodden processes.
• You'd find leading a team while being senior frustrating rather than energising.

The practical stuff:

• Where: Our home is Belfast, BT9. The role is remote-friendly but we'd want you in the office regularly.
• Salary: We're happy to talk openly about this.
• Start date: As soon as we find the right person.

How to apply: Send a tailored CV and letter to: karen@mxb.agency telling us what you'd want to do in your first 90 days, and what you think the most interesting thing happening in media right now is. We read everything. MXB is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from people of all backgrounds.