Performance Director in Manchester

What you’ll do

• Performance strategy & proposition
  • Own and evolve Trunk’s performance strategy across SEO, Digital PR, Paid Media, Social, Data, Analytics and CRO.
  • Ensure performance activity is tightly aligned to client business objectives, not just channel KPIs.
  • Lead integrated performance planning that connects media, creative, data and technology.
  • Play a key role in shaping how Trunk responds to changes in search, AI-driven discovery and platform ecosystems.
• Commercial leadership & results
  • Be accountable for the commercial health and impact of the Performance division.
  • Ensure work is scoped, priced and delivered profitably in partnership with Client Services and Finance.
  • Identify growth opportunities within existing clients through smarter performance strategy and integration.
  • Support new business by shaping performance approaches, pricing models and pitches.
  • Act as senior strategic lead on key client relationships.
  • Translate complex performance data into clear insight, direction and decision-making for clients.
  • Build confidence and trust by challenging when needed, and grounding recommendations in evidence and impact.
  • Ensure performance reporting tells a commercial story, not just a channel story.
• Team leadership & capability building
  • Lead, develop and inspire the Performance team and wider specialists.
  • Build a culture of high standards, accountability, curiosity and continuous improvement.
  • Identify capability gaps and shape learning, hiring and progression plans accordingly.
  • Ensure performance teams work collaboratively with Creative, Strategy and Tech, not in silos.
• Innovation, automation & AI (practical, not hype)
  • Help move AI and automation from experimentation into day-to-day performance workflows where it adds real value.
  • Champion smarter systems, tooling and processes that improve efficiency, decision-making and outcomes.
  • Ensure innovation is grounded in client benefit and commercial impact.
  • Contribute to Trunk’s thought leadership through case studies, award entries and POVs.

About you

• Experience & expertise
  • Senior leadership experience in performance or digital strategy, ideally within an agency or complex in-house environment.
  • Proven track record of driving commercial growth, not just channel optimisation.
  • Confident working with data, analytics and performance frameworks to guide decision-making.
  • Experience leading and developing senior specialists and leadership teams.
• Mindset & behaviours
  • Commercially sharp, strategically minded and comfortable owning outcomes.
  • Naturally collaborative, able to bridge creative, performance and technology.
  • Curious about how marketing is changing but grounded in what actually works.
  • Comfortable challenging clients and internal teams in service of better results.
  • Calm, credible leader who raises standards without ego.

Why this role matters at Trunk

This is a senior leadership role with real influence over:

• How Trunk defines effective marketing
• How we integrate performance, creative and technology
• How we stay commercially sharp as platforms, AI and visibility models evolve

You won’t just be running channels; you’ll be shaping how performance means something.

Your rewards

• Alongside a competitive salary, you will receive:
• An additional day of holiday for each year of service, up to a total of 5 extra days.
• The option to buy an extra week’s holiday per year.
• 0.5-day life balance day each month to do whatever you want (excludes December).
• Early finish on a Friday.
• Private health insurance which covers pre-existing conditions, cancer care and gives cashback for routine optical and dental treatments.
• Life assurance.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.
• A £1,000 payment for referring a new hire.
• Hybrid working and flexibility.
• Access to a personal trainer/nutritionist.
• Free fruit and breakfast in the Manchester office.
• Mental health support and access to professional therapists through ‘Spill’.
• Peer feedback and performance reviews tailored personal development plans and objectives.
• Access to industry-accredited professional qualifications through our IPA membership.
• Employee voice, we consult our people on matters affecting them and encourage participation in agency surveys, our suggestions box and employee awards.
• A social buddy upon joining who helps you settle into the agency.
• Monthly agency socials and events put on by our culture committee.
• Lunch & Learn events to gain more understanding of different facets of agency life.

All supported by a culture driven by great work, team collaboration, passion, honesty, and mutual respect for everyone.

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We had always thought our business was open and inclusive. After all, one of our values is “Everyone matters.” We hammer home the behaviour of treating everyone with respect, seeing things from the other person’s perspective, understanding that everyone has different values, responsibilities, concerns and families.

But when you delve a little deeper into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, this value is a great place to start but it involves so much more.

Here at Trunk, we naturally welcome difference. It’s what gives us strength as a business, the wide breadth of experience, capabilities, and perspectives. And any creative business knows that the best ideas don’t come from just one place. Diversity is important, but we feel what makes the real difference is inclusivity, or the act of helping people feel valued and enabled regardless of their differences.

We have really then only just begun our diversity and inclusivity journey. We started by ensuring everyone has mandatory training to help people understand what it means to be inclusive. We’ve set up a panel of people within the business to champion difference and we have ambassadors who are gaining their IPA D, E & I certifications. We continue to learn and evolve, and realise that this is not a quick win, or a ‘one and done.’

We are adapting our practices, offering home working, flexibility around start times, offer monthly life-balance days, access to mental health professionals, and assessing our working spaces to accommodate brilliant neurodivergent minds. And will continue to evolve to enable the differences around us.