Head - Search Engine Optimization - Artificial Intelligence First Growth - IIT/NIT/BITS/IIM/MDI/ISB

Head of AI-First Growth

Location: Gurgaon

Direct reports: 2 engineers (full-stack + data/tooling)

About PlanetSpark:

PlanetSpark is Indias leading platform for kids & grown ups communication skills public speaking, creative writing, spoken English. Trusted by 1,00,000+ parents across 10+ countries, we run live 1:1, Group expert-led classes for ages 416, powered by an AI-augmented teaching stack.

Organic search currently brings 4M+ monthly clicks, 280M+ impressions, hundreds of thousands of leads per quarter. The 1218 month frontier is winning organic traffic in the AI era where Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude are reshaping how families find learning resources.

Were hiring a senior SEO Lead to own this entire frontier with a small, sharp, AI-armed team.

Why this role exists:

The old playbook hiring writers in bulk to publish AI-drafted content is now a liability. Googles scaled-content-abuse and helpful-content updates have demoted entire sites that played that game. AI search engines reward authority, original data, and structured content. The companies that win the next five years of organic growth will be the ones that build technical infrastructure, brand entity signals, and original first-hand expertise.

We need one leader who can hold that whole picture strategy, technical SEO, content judgment, GEO (generative engine optimization), and the discipline to ship code themselves supported by two engineers and AI coding tools. No more layers, no more committees, no more freelancer brigades.

What youll own:

- Organic traffic, leads, demos, and attributed revenue across PlanetSparks entire site footprint (Blogs, New LPs, Worksheets, Resources, Courses, Tutor listings, programmatic city/grade templates).

- A 131-item living SEO checklist with daily / weekly / monthly automated audits. You inherit it; you evolve it.

- AI-search citation strategy: getting PlanetSpark cited in Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude responses for category queries.

- Editorial standards for AI-augmented content every published piece must have at least one element AI couldnt generate (original data, named coach quote, internal benchmark, etc.).

- The author authority layer: real, named PlanetSpark coaches with credentials, Person schema, byline pages, LinkedIn-linked.

- Two direct reports (a full-stack engineer and a data/tooling engineer), with you as both their manager and their pair-programmer.

- Ship MRs yourself schema components, copy fixes, lead-magnet variants using Claude Code, Cursor, or your tool of choice. You are not blocked on engineering for small changes.

Responsibilities:

1. Strategy & ownership:

- Define and own the 12-month SEO roadmap across all product surfaces.

- Decide what to publish, what to deprecate, what to consolidate.

- Set the editorial bar and enforce it unflinchingly.

2. Technical SEO:

- Indexation health: sitemaps, robots, canonicals, soft-404 audits, GSC coverage.

- Schema markup: Article, BlogPosting, FAQPage, LearningResource, Course, Person, ProfilePage, BreadcrumbList, Organization you can write JSON-LD by hand and validate it.

- Core Web Vitals oversight partner with engineers on LCP/INP/CLS budgets per template.

- AI-search hygiene: llms.txt, definitional first paragraphs, sameAs entity linking, structured Q&A, named expert E-E-A-T signals.

3. Content & editorial:

- Set the editorial standard: every piece needs original data, named coach POV, or proprietary insight no exceptions.

- Commission and edit PlanetSpark Index-style original-data reports (46 per year).

- Build and maintain author hubs (real coach profiles, credentials, photos).

- Audit and consolidate the existing content corpus noindex / merge the bottom 30% over the first 90 days.

4. Code & engineering:

- Ship merge requests directly for SEO/schema/copy work, using AI coding tools.

- Review your engineers SEO-touching PRs.

- Be the source of truth on schema validation, canonical strategy, and template-level SEO patterns.

5. Measurement & reporting:

- Weekly: SEO health snapshot (auto-generated, you interpret).

- Monthly: AI-citation audit, brand SERP review, top regressions.

- Quarterly: strategy review to CEO/leadership.

Must-have qualifications:

- 5-8 years SEO experience, at least 2 of those leading a team or owning a major sites organic strategy.

- Demonstrated organic growth at a content-heavy or edtech / ecommerce site (please bring metrics: traffic before -after, revenue impact).

- Technical fluency: read JSX/TypeScript/Python, comfortable with git, has shipped MRs yourself (not just specd them).

- Hands-on with at least one AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Aider) and used it for production work.

- Schema markup expert can write JSON-LD by hand, validate, and debug.

- Strong editorial voice can identify and rewrite filler, willing to ship 30 great pieces over 300 mediocre ones.

- Working knowledge of Next.js, headless CMS (Strapi or similar), GA4, GSC, Bing Webmaster Tools, PSI / CrUX.

- Track record of AI-search / GEO work, or demonstrated curiosity + early experiments in the space.

Nice-to-haves:

- Education / kids / parenting domain knowledge.

- Experience with programmatic SEO at scale (city subject grade templates).

- Open-source contributions, published SEO writing, or a public portfolio.

- Experience working alongside offshore content / dev teams.

- Comfort presenting to a CEO / board on organic growth.

Success metrics (12 months):

- Organic-attributed revenue +50% year-over-year.

- AI-search citation share for category queries 25% (above baseline).

- Lead-to-demo conversion on top 25 pages +30% vs current.

- Top 10 product templates: median mobile LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms.

What we offer:

- Reports directly into senior leadership no committees, no political layers.

- A small, high-leverage team you build and run.

- All AI tools fully reimbursed: Claude Pro, Cursor, ChatGPT Plus, Perplexity Pro.

- Annual learning budget for conferences and courses.

Educational Requirement:

Graduation or Post-Graduation from a Tier-1 college/institution is mandatory. Preferred institutes include IITs, IIMs, BITS Pilani, NSIT, DTU, IIITs, top NITs, ISB, XLRI, FMS, and equivalent institutions.