AEO Specialist/Lead (AI / Answer Engine Optimization) - Contract

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Monitor Thorne's AI visibility, share of voice, average position, sentiment, and citation performance daily in Profound.
• Flag competitive movement and emerging negative sources before they erode rankings or sentiment.
• Distill Profound data into clear, actionable insights and recurring readouts for the VP of Growth and broader stakeholders.
• Own and maintain the AEO/AI-visibility roadmap, translating Croud's strategic recommendations into a prioritized, resourced execution plan.
• Partner with Croud on quarterly strategy, topic prioritization (Defend / Grow / Repair / Build), and measurement — this person helps define the strategy, not just execute it.
• Relentlessly prioritize the backlog based on business impact, competitive pressure, and available resourcing.
• Project-manage AEO initiatives across every key channel + channel owner: content/blog, site/ecommerce, and PR / media affiliate.
• Partner directly with Product and Dev to scope, prioritize, and track AEO-related tickets (crawlability, structured data, PDP fixes) through a backlog with significant competing demand.
• Apply the repeatable citation model across owned and editorial (for credible third-party validation)
• Bring a builder's instinct to the role — spot manual, repetitive AEO work (data pulls, competitive tracking, content briefs) and use AI tools or lightweight automation to remove it.
• Where there's appetite, extend that same AI-native approach to other growth marketing workflows across the broader team.

WHAT YOU NEED