Associate Director, Client Partnership

THE ROLE:

We expect an Associate Director, Client Partnership to develop a deep understanding of the clients in their portfolio—their business, challenges, goals, competitive landscape, and opportunities for growth. You'll represent DEPT® as a trusted client partner, helping connect business priorities to media strategy and execution while driving alignment across teams and workstreams.

This role will work closely across Media (Paid Search, Paid Social, Programmatic etc.) and Creative, and other cross-functional teams. The ideal candidate combines strong client partnership skills with deep media expertise and the ability to connect the dots across channels, ensuring our work is cohesive, high-quality, and moving our clients' businesses forward.

This is a remote, US-based role. Candidates located in the Pacific or Mountain time zones are preferred.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

CLIENT MANAGEMENT

• Partner with senior clients and internal teams to develop annual media strategies aligned with broader business objectives.
• Lead and participate in recurring meetings with client-side leadership focused on business performance, macro goals, industry trends, strategic opportunities, and opportunities to drive growth.
• Build strong relationships with key client stakeholders, developing a deep understanding of their business and serving as a trusted day-to-day partner.
• Drive client satisfaction, retention, and organic growth by proactively identifying needs, risks, and opportunities.
• Navigate and resolve issues that arise across accounts, exercising sound judgment on when to solve independently and when to escalate.
• Represent Client Partnership across client, vendor, and internal conversations and provide continuity across workstreams.

TEAM PARTICIPATION & STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

• Partner with media teams to drive integrated strategies and work that moves clients' businesses forward.
• Serve as connective tissue across Paid Search, Paid Social, Programmatic, Strategy, Analytics, Data Science, Data Tech, Creative, and other relevant workstreams.
• Ensure teams are operating as one integrated media organization rather than independent channel teams, identifying dependencies, opportunities, and risks across channels.
• Lead and contribute to strategic responses to briefs and develop strong POVs across media, data, technology, and emerging industry opportunities.
• Connect performance across channels, drawing conclusions and translating analysis into actionable insights and recommendations.
• Review cross-channel reporting and client-facing deliverables to ensure the work tells a cohesive story, answers the right business questions, and meets a consistently high quality bar.
• Challenge teams constructively when recommendations, reporting, or deliverables do not meet client or DEPT® standards.
• Proactively identify opportunities to improve collaboration, workflows, reporting, and operational consistency across teams.
• Contribute ideas and experience to the broader strategic process.
• Support employee retention, mentor junior team members, and contribute to direct reports' development, where applicable.

OWNERSHIP & EXECUTION

• Excellent judgment under ambiguity. Makes progress without waiting for perfect requirements, exercises sound judgment independently, and knows when to escalate or seek additional input.
• Bias toward ownership. Proactively identifies problems and opportunities, defines success, and drives work to completion with limited oversight.
• Strong prioritization. Makes thoughtful tradeoffs across competing workstreams, client needs, and business priorities, particularly in fast-moving environments.
• High degree of autonomy. Independently owns recurring and ad hoc cross-channel workstreams while proactively identifying where senior leadership involvement will add the most value.
• Operational rigor. Maintains visibility across budgets, pacing, testing, reporting, deliverables, and other critical account workstreams, proactively identifying risks before they become client issues.

COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION

• Excellent written and verbal communication. Produces clear documentation, concise performance updates, compelling narratives, and polished executive-ready client materials.
• Strong client presence. Confidently represents DEPT® in client conversations, communicates effectively with senior stakeholders, and can step into meetings with appropriate context and judgment.
• Strong stakeholder management. Builds trust and drives alignment across media, strategy, analytics, data, creative, and client teams, even when priorities compete.
• Cross-functional leadership. Connects people and workstreams that may not naturally operate together and drives shared accountability toward client outcomes.
• Comfort with rapid iteration. Incorporates new information, performance data, and feedback quickly and adapts recommendations as client and business priorities evolve.

LEARNING & PROBLEM SOLVING

• Learning velocity. Demonstrated ability to quickly develop expertise across new platforms, verticals, products, and unfamiliar business challenges.
• Quality control instincts. Maintains a high bar for reporting, QA, client deliverables, and strategic recommendations, proactively identifying inconsistencies, pacing concerns, or gaps before they reach clients.
• Solutions-oriented mindset. Brings recommendations—not just problems—and is comfortable navigating complex issues without an obvious owner or solution.

CROSS-CHANNEL EXPERTISE

• Cross-LOB operator mindset. Understands how media workstreams connect across lines of business and proactively identifies opportunities to improve collaboration, consistency, knowledge sharing, and efficiency across the broader account.
• Cross-functional media understanding. Understands how activation connects to Strategy, Analytics, Data Science, Data Tech, Creative, and Measurement and can effectively translate between these disciplines.
• Performance orientation. Comfortable interrogating media performance, challenging recommendations, understanding budget and pacing implications, and asking the right questions of channel specialists without needing to be the hands-on activation owner for every platform.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 5–7+ years of experience in client partnership, account management, media, or related roles within an agency environment, with demonstrated experience operating at a Senior Manager or equivalent level.
• B2B and Enterprise experience is a MUST.
• Experience with media planning, campaign execution, budget management, forecasting, pacing, reporting, and performance analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and coordinate across media, strategy, analytics/data, creative, and other disciplines.
• Strong client relationship skills, including experience communicating with senior stakeholders and contributing to strategic planning.
• Experience translating complex media performance into clear, actionable client narratives and recommendations.
• Strong organizational and prioritization skills with the ability to lead multiple complex workstreams simultaneously.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and demonstrated judgment in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Experience mentoring or developing junior team members; direct people management experience is a plus.