Business Director, Digital Development

About the Role:

Business Director, Digital Development

Team: Advanced Solutions (OMD UK)
Reports to: Managing Partner, Advanced Solutions

Why this role exists

We’re hiring a senior hybrid operator–strategist who can both 1) squeeze more value from the capabilities we already have in market (aligned to OMD’s performance integration function) and 2) build and deliver the next-wave capability roadmap for clients (digital development). You’ll be the connective tissue between day-to-day activation and longer-term transformation - owning outcomes, not just outputs.

 

What you’ll lead

1) Day-to-day performance development and integration (utilisation & optimisation)

• Be the senior, hands-on partner for one of our biggest commercial account on cross-channel performance, setting testing agendas, ensuring platform best practice, and unblocking issues across paid search, social, programmatic, online video and app growth.
• Drive rigorous optimisation cadences and automation, holding activation teams to high standards across GMP/Meta/Omni and partner platforms; step in by exception to troubleshoot.
• Make experimentation “always-on”: design incrementality tests, audience strategies and measurement plans that ladder to growth KPIs.
• Ensure Connected Performance, Decision Science and other crafts are aligned to the same plan, data, and operating rhythm.

2) Digital development (roadmaps & capability building)

• Diagnose the client’s digital maturity (people, process, platforms, data/measurement) and build a multi-phase roadmap that tangibly improves efficiency and effectiveness.
• Translate roadmap items into scoped initiatives - e.g., app acceleration, AI/automation use cases, advanced measurement, first-party data enablement - and manage delivery with specialist teams and partners.
• Standardise reusable frameworks, playbooks and ways of working that can scale across Advanced Solutions.

 

Core responsibilities

Client leadership

• Senior day-to-day counterpart for the client's senior stakeholders on performance and capability topics; frame problems, set the plan, and hold teams accountable to outcomes.
• Surface and sequence “what’s next” capability bets; build compelling business cases with clear value hypotheses (ROI/efficiency/sales impact).

Programme & delivery

• Convert the roadmap into briefs, timelines, owners and OKRs; manage cross-functional delivery (Connected Performance, Data & Technology, Decision Science, Ad Ops, product partners).
• Land change: training, comms, and governance to embed new capabilities into everyday activation.

Performance excellence

• Own the testing agenda and optimisation guardrails; ensure channel teams are leveraging audiences, automation and creative systems appropriately; maintain platform certifications across the team.

Commercials & growth

• Identify, scope and shepherd incremental projects (specialist service/partner solutions); track forecasts/budgets alongside client leadership; contribute to pitch responses with a clear, methodical approach.

Thought leadership & upskilling

• Package learnings into case studies, playbooks and internal sessions; contribute to industry pieces where relevant; help raise the floor of digital craft across Advanced Solutions.

 

What success looks like (first 12 months)

By 90 days

• Unified performance plan and testing backlog aligned to the client’s priorities; roadmap v1 signed off with milestones and owners.

By 6 months

• 2–3 roadmap initiatives live (e.g., app acceleration test, AI-assisted optimisation, upgraded measurement