Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week
CVP - Director, AI Search Department: Experience and Digital Marketing
Location: Home office - New York, NY (Hybrid - Mon, Tues, Wed)
Position OverviewThe Director of AI Search and Marketing Experience Strategy is a strategic leadership role within the AI/Agentic Experience Strategy function, accountable for three interconnected areas: leading New York Life's AI Search strategy (Answer Engine Optimization, Generative Answer Optimization, and AI-mediated discoverability), defining AI-driven acquisition strategies and journeys, and shaping AI/agentic strategies for marketing experiences. This role combines strategic facilitation with hands-on concept development, experimentation, and practice innovation.
This role sits alongside two peer Directors focused on consumer/client journeys and field journeys, respectively. Where those roles are oriented around end-to-end audience experience strategy, this role is oriented around AI-mediated channels and marketing capabilities that operate across audience contexts. A critical dimension of this role is serving as the connective tissue between the AI/Agentic Experience Strategy function and the AI Experience Product Management function, partnering heavily to ensure experience strategy and product strategy remain tightly aligned.
Key ResponsibilitiesAI Search, Acquisition, and AI-Mediated Demand Strategy- Lead the cross-functional strategy and program for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Answer Optimization (GAO), and AI-mediated discoverability, establishing New York Life's approach to being accurately and favorably represented in AI search environments including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and emerging AI agents.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to define and maintain strategic frameworks for how New York Life's content, knowledge assets, and brand voice should be structured, optimized, and governed to perform in large language model and AI-generated answer contexts.
- Drive cross-functional collaboration with Content Strategy, Brand, Experience Design, VOC, Performance Marketing, Enablement, AI Product Management, and Technology teams to translate AEO/GAO strategy into actionable programs, content standards, and workflow integrations.
- Define AI-driven acquisition strategies that leverage AI search, AI-mediated discovery, and AI-enabled marketing channels to generate and capture demand across product lines and audience segments, including consumer acquisition and field recruiting awareness.
- Partner with Experience Design and research/voice of customer teams to map and optimize AI-influenced acquisition journeys, identifying where AI touchpoints create entry points and guide prospects into the right areas of New York Life.
- Partner with analytics, Consumer Marketing, Performance Marketing, and Growth teams to establish measurement frameworks for AI search presence and AI's contribution to acquisition outcomes, including attribution across AI-mediated touchpoints.
- Develop and maintain a competitive intelligence practice for AI search, monitoring how New York Life and key competitors are represented across AI search platforms.
- Distinguish credible AI search optimization approaches from vendor hype, maintaining a pragmatic, evidence-based program that prioritizes sustainable content quality over short-term tactics.
Future-State Experience Vision, Concept Development, and Experimentation- Lead future-state visioning for AI-mediated acquisition and marketing experiences, defining what fundamentally different AI-first discovery, engagement, and demand models look like as AI becomes the primary channel through which consumers and other audiences find and evaluate financial services providers.
- Drive hands-on AI experience concept development in partnership with Experience Design for marketing and acquisition contexts, owning the AI behavior concept while collaborating with design partners on prototyping and testing.
- Develop and lead AI experience experiments for AI search and marketing contexts, defining hypotheses, structuring tests, and evaluating outcomes to build evidence for which AI acquisition and marketing models work and why.
AI/Agentic Strategies for Marketing Experiences- Shape the strategic direction for AI and agentic marketing experiences including AI-assisted content delivery, personalization, conversational marketing interfaces, and AI-enabled campaign experiences.
- Identify opportunities where agentic capabilities can enhance marketing effectiveness, such as automated content optimization, dynamic audience segmentation, intelligent campaign orchestration, and AI-mediated engagement across channels.
- Define AI experience principles and guardrails specific to marketing contexts, ensuring marketing AI experiences reflect New York Life's brand standards, regulatory requirements, and commitment to human-centered relationships.
- Partner with Marketing Operations, Content Strategy, and Performance Marketing to ensure AI marketing strategies are operationally feasible and aligned with existing workflows and technology capabilities.
Structured Data, Content Architecture, and AI Discoverability- Facilitate strategy and alignment for structured data, schema markup, and content architecture as they relate to AI search discoverability and LLM citation performance.
- Partner with Content Strategy, SEO, Enablement, Dotcom, and Technology teams to define and implement content structuring standards that improve how New York Life's knowledge assets are ingested, indexed, and surfaced by AI systems.
- Partner with Enablement, Technology, Data, and Product teams to evaluate and recommend approaches to knowledge graph development, entity resolution, and semantic content modeling that support both traditional and AI-mediated search performance.
AI Experience Artifacts, Tooling, and Practice Innovation- Partner broadly to pioneer new artifact types for AI search and marketing experiences, such as AI search performance dashboards, competitive representation maps, and AI acquisition attribution models that make AI-mediated demand visible and measurable.
- Build and use AI-powered tools to accelerate strategy work, including competitive intelligence analysis, experience visualizations, and rapid iteration on AI search and marketing artifacts.
AI Experience Product Management Partnership- Heavily support the AI Experience Product Management team, ensuring that AI search insights, acquisition strategies, and marketing experience requirements inform product capability priorities and roadmap decisions.
- Partner to translate AI experience strategy, governance frameworks, and marketing experience requirements into product inputs including capability briefs, use case definitions, and prioritization recommendations.
- Participate in product portfolio reviews, roadmap planning, and capability prioritization discussions, providing experience-grounded perspective on sequencing, trade-offs, and investment decisions.
- Identify gaps or misalignments between experience strategy intent and product delivery direction, and work collaboratively with both functions to resolve them.
Governance, Stakeholder Alignment, and Cross-Functional Collaboration- Support the development and maintenance of AI experience governance frameworks and guardrail standards, with particular attention to AI search, acquisition, and marketing experience contexts.
- Ensure AI Search programs and marketing AI strategies incorporate compliance, legal, regulatory, and risk requirements, surfacing constraints early and translating them into practical guidance.
- Build and maintain strong working relationships across Content Strategy, Performance Marketing, SEO, Consumer Marketing, Product Management, Product Design, Technology, Data and AI, Compliance, and Enablement.
- Communicate AI Search strategy, acquisition strategy, and marketing experience recommendations clearly to senior leadership and working-level cross-functional partners.
AI Domain Fluency and Technology Partnership- Maintain working fluency across AI technology domains relevant to search, acquisition, and marketing experience strategy, including generative AI/LLMs, AI search and retrieval architectures (RAG, vector retrieval, structured data for LLM citation), agentic systems, and personalization/recommendation models.
- Maintain hands-on familiarity with AI tools and platforms sufficient to use them in concept development, competitive analysis, and AI experience evaluation.
- Bring a pragmatic lens to AI capability evaluation, maintaining healthy skepticism while remaining open to emerging approaches with demonstrated potential.
QualificationsEducation- Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Product Management, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field; Master's degree preferred.
Experience- 10+ years of progressive experience in digital strategy, product strategy, content strategy, or marketing strategy, with demonstrated responsibility for cross-functional programs or capability portfolios.
- 5+ years working with AI, machine learning, or emerging technology in a strategy, product, or consulting capacity, with applied experience in consumer-facing or marketing contexts.
- Demonstrated experience in financial services, insurance, retirement, or wealth management, with working knowledge of the regulatory environment across consumer protection domains.
- Prior experience leading or contributing to SEO, content strategy, or digital discoverability programs; direct experience with AI search, AEO, or generative search optimization strongly preferred.
- Track record of hands-on AI experience concept development, experimentation, or prototyping in partnership with design and technology teams.
- Experience translating experience or marketing strategy into product requirements and roadmap inputs in a matrixed organization; prior product management experience or close product management partnership preferred.
- Proven ability to drive alignment and influence without authority across stakeholders with competing priorities.
Skills- Strong command of AI search and discoverability domains, including structured data, schema markup, knowledge graph concepts, content architecture for LLM citation, and generative search optimization approaches.
- Working fluency across AI technology domains relevant to marketing and experience strategy, including generative AI, agentic systems, RAG-based knowledge systems, and personalization/recommendation models.
- Hands-on fluency with AI tools and platforms sufficient to develop AI experience concepts, conduct competitive analysis, and build strategy artifacts using AI.
- Ability to translate between experience strategy and product management contexts, bridging intent with requirements without losing fidelity in either direction.
- Ability to envision and articulate future-state AI experience models for acquisition and marketing, not just optimize current-state approaches.
- Strong strategic facilitation and cross-functional program leadership skills; able to structure ambiguous problems and drive groups to actionable conclusions.
- Excellent communication skills with demonstrated ability to tailor messaging across executive, business, and working-level audiences.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity with a bias toward structure, pragmatic progress, and healthy skepticism toward hype.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience developing novel strategy artifacts or practice methodologies for emerging technology domains where established playbooks do not yet exist.
- Experience with AI-driven acquisition strategy, demand generation, or growth marketing in regulated industries.
- Familiarity with adtech and martech platforms, digital experience platforms (DXP), or content management ecosystems as they relate to AI-enabled marketing and experience delivery.
- Prior management consulting or advisory experience, particularly in financial services or insurance transformation.
Pay TransparencySalary Range: $119,000 - $200,000
Overtime eligible: Exempt
Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes
Sales bonus eligible: No
Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual's experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program.
