Associate Director, Paid Strategy (all genders)

About this role

Responsibilities

• Global Paid Marketing owns how HelloFresh Group buys customers across its portfolio of brands and markets. The team spans Paid Social, Paid Search, Display & Video, Partnerships & Affiliates, Creative Strategy and the Creators program, and steers one of the largest acquisition budgets in direct-to-consumer. We are rebuilding the organization around fewer, stronger channel leaders and an AI-first way of working, and this role is central to making that model run.
• We are looking for an Associate Director of Paid Strategy to own the strategy, planning and operating backbone of Global Paid Marketing. Reporting to the Head of Global Paid Marketing, you will set how the paid portfolio plans its budget, runs its business reviews and prioritizes and delivers its biggest bets.
• Channel leaders own their numbers. You own the system around them: the plan they commit to, the cadence that holds them to it, the cross-channel programs no single team owns, and the insightsthat turns many channels and dozens of entities into one clear view of the business. It is a role with unusual breadth and visibility, built for someone who wants to understand how a large paid organization is run, not just how one channel performs.
• You will work directly with the paid leadership team, with StratOps as your closest partner: StratOps sets the company-wide growth agenda and governance, and you translate it into how paid team plans, operates and reports, then bring the paid view back into that agenda. You will also partner closely with Finance, Analytics, HR and Brand. This role is primarily designed as an Individual Contributor position: ; your impact comes from the quality of your thinking, the rigor of your follow-through and the trust you earn.
• Above all, we are looking for people who will make HelloFresh better. We believe there are many different ways of developing skills and we love diverse experiences! So even if you don’t “tick all the boxes” but think you’d thrive in this role, we would really like to learn more about you.
• What you’ll do
• Paid strategy and planning
• Own the planning cycle for the global paid portfolio: annual Business Plan, half-year budgets and monthly MBT re-forecasts, from channel-mix and entity allocation through to CAC and volume guardrails.
• Partner with StratOps and Finance so paid commitments tie to company targets, and pressure-test every submission based on run-rates and data-driven assumptions
• Shape the multi-year paid strategy: where to invest, where to pull back, and which capabilities the organization needs to build.
• Operating rhythm and governance
• Design and run the operating cadence of the paid organization: weekly and monthly business reviews, QBRs, leadership team meetings and senior leadership steerings.
• Set agendas, write or commission pre-reads, and own the decision and action log so every meeting ends with an owner and a date, and every commitment is followed through.
• Define the KPIs, targets and reporting standards that let leadership compare channels and entities on one consistent basis.
• Cross-channel programs
• Lead the high-priority initiatives that span channels and no single team owns, such as measurement and incrementality, partner and agency consolidation, and AI adoption across the team.
• Run them with clear scope, milestones and owners, and escalate early when they drift.
• Conduct and synthesize ad hoc strategic analysis to support paid leadership with decision marking or problem solving
• Insight and executive communication
• Turn performance across channels and entities into a single, narrative for senior leadership: CMO updates, QBRs, steering decks and budget reviews.
• Ensure high quality and consistent deliverable from the Paid team to Leadership to enable fast and informed decision making
• Organization and capability planning
• Support org design, headcount and people-cost planning for Global Paid Marketing, working with HR Business Partners and Talent Acquisition.
• Track priority hiring and internal moves, and keep one source of truth for the team's structure and capacity.
• Drive knowledge transfer and best-practice sharing across channels and markets.
• AI-enabled operations
• Use AI to automate recurring reporting, business-review preparation and forecasting, freeing leaders' time for decisions.
• Assess and introduce AI tools that improve planning, budget optimization and insight generation, and hold their output to account.
• What you’ll bring
• 6+ years in strategy and operations, growth strategy, management consulting or performance marketing at scale, including time close to senior decision-makers.
• A strong quantitative foundation: you can build a budget or forecast model, read an experiment, and defend a recommendation with data rather than opinion. SQL or equivalent is a plus.
• Fluency in marketing economics: CAC, payback, incrementality, and how budget, channel mix and volume trade off against each other.
• Proven ability to run complex, cross-functional programs and to influence senior peers without direct authority.
• Executive-level communication: you write crisp pre-reads, build decks that make a point on page one, and can tell leadership what they need to hear.
• Sound judgment and discretion with confidential information, including budgets, organization plans and people topics.
• Hands-on use of AI to compress real analytical or operational work, not just as a search engine.
• Comfort with ambiguity and shifting priorities; you bring structure where there is none and keep many threads moving at once.
• Bonus points if you have owned a planning or budget cycle end to end, worked in a multi-brand or multi-market organization, or come from a top-tier consulting or strategy program.
• What success looks like in your first year
• The paid operating cadence runs on a fixed calendar, with standard pre-reads and a decision log that leadership trusts and uses.
• The next Business Plan and half-year budget submissions go in on time, from one source of truth, with every material assumption pressure-tested.
• Two or three cross-channel programs have landed with measurable impact on CAC, volume or team productivity.
• Recurring reporting and review preparation are largely automated, and leaders spend their time on decisions rather than slides.
• Senior leadership gets one consistent, candid view of paid performance across channels and entities.