Ellipsis is a world class SEO Content agency. We're on a mission to be the best in the world at SEO Content. As our new Head of Content, you'll lead our Content and Writing teams into our next phase of growth.
Ellipsis is growing quickly. Most of our clients are technology/SaaS, although we’re branching out. We've doubled in size (headcount, revenue, profitability) in the last year and we're on track to do the same again. We have an incredibly talented team who are committed to doing the best work of their careers – and building something special here.
We’re entirely serious about realising our mission to the very best at SEO Content, and you’ll play a key role in this. You can see our vision and values here.
The Head of Content is responsible for managing production, people, and process across the 100+ posts/month we produce for our clients through our flagship service, Content Growth. We both want to ensure every piece of content we produce is perfect and that each piece is better than the last – whilst being on-time and on-budget across everything.
We use a lot of AI to decide what to write about. We built FALCON AI in-house to do this, and it was featured in the New York Times in March 2022 (9 months before the release of ChatGPT!). We combine this with doing our writing by hand in-house.
In a generative AI world, we need to go beyond what AI can do itself and this means having a team of talented writers in-house to craft our clients' content. We love technology and use a lot of it – but we use it to help us do better work, rather than endlessly in search of efficiencies.
You’ll be leading the Content team. This includes line managing four Content Managers (who own the process and project with their clients), and then also our Graphic Designer and Senior Writer. Some members of your team also have direct reports (1 of the Content Managers manages the Content Executive role, and our Senior Writer manages four Writers). You’ll be responsible for both the progression and performance of your direct reportees, and supporting your indirect reportees.
Our content process is a mature and (fairly) well-documented production workflow. The vast majority of this is publicly available on our Wiki, for example our style guide. As Head of Content, you’ll own this process and drive improvements in all areas. You’ll identify and improve weak spots, own OKRs and KPIs for content production quality, budget, and outcomes, and ensure Content Growth remains the best-in-class solution for our clients.
SEO requirements are taken care of by our Strategy team. You’ll work closely with the Strategy team to ensure continual improvement here. You’ll also liaise with Sales and the Managing Director to understand content capacity needs, plan hiring, and set budgets.
We currently serve ~20 clients on Content Growth and produce 100+ posts/month. We plan to significantly scale this in the next year, and as Head of Content you will drive this.
Success in this role will require getting fully immersed and up to speed with Content Growth in your first 6 months, and then putting us in a better-than-ever place to deliver on our mission of being the best in the world at SEO Content. It’s an exciting period for Ellipsis, and we’re looking for the right person to take the team through this critical period.
Ellipsis is a 100% remote company, and always has been. We’re fully distributed and the Content team has members from Cincinnati to Cairo; given this distribution, significant overlap with UK/EU hours would be helpful. We meet regularly for team meetups (most recently Edinburgh in January 2024). We’re aiming to become a B Corp in 2024.
We do a lot of things differently. We’re not churning out content for its own sake: we’re interested in creating the increasingly rare actually-useful content that solves a problem for the reader and showcases our client’s offering.
The Head of Content reports directly to the Managing Director, and will join our Senior Leadership team. This is an exciting opportunity to join a growing company doing great work and working on interesting challenges at a time when you can influence and help shape its future.
This position can be broken down as follows:
- 50% Leadership and management of the Content team and process
- 40% Strategic planning and reporting
- 10% Client work on your own clients
You will own the Content team, and the content process. You’ll be responsible for a huge part of the success of the business. To support the above, you need the following skills:
- Leadership: success in the Head of Content role will have a huge impact on the business. You have the opportunity to continue to build, nurture, and progress our world-class team as we scale.
This will require both nurturing and leading the existing Content team, growing the team, and ensuring Content Growth remains a best-in-class service for clients (both client experience and client outcomes). You’ll also be part of our Senior Leadership team, where we shape the future of the business and get peer support to make the best possible decisions.
- Data and analytics: you’ll be dealing with both production and analytics data, and KPIs coming out of these. We plan our capacity across Google Sheets, Airtable, and Tableau; you’ll own the updating and improvement of this setup, and leverage it to ensure we have a bottleneck-free production workflow that can deliver work on-time and on-budget and can meet our hiring/sales needs.
We collect a lot of data for each Content Growth client; as you’ll be responsible for overall outcomes from Content Growth, you should be happy triaging and analysing this data to get the insights we need to improve.
- Content and clients: whilst we’re a growing team, we’re still a small company (20 people). In small companies, it’s a necessity to wear many hats. Whilst you’ll spend most of your time leading the Content team, you’ll also have a couple of clients where you’re the project lead.
Whilst your client work is only a small part of the role, you should be happy being in the weeds doing client work, talking to your clients, and doing great content work. We find this also goes a long way to give the role an understanding of what can be improved.
Requirements
Hard skill requirements:
- You either have experience as a Head of Content or similar Marketing Leadership position. We’re open to experience from agency, technology company, and B2B settings.
- Significant experience in content marketing, including time leading a team, and time in the weeds doing content production and client work. You will be the ultimate point of escalation for both team members who need help, and clients who need problems solved.
- Strong understanding of SEO Content production, going beyond writing. You understand what research and effort is needed for great rankings, and have had experience experimenting with different techniques which have given results.
- Impeccable English editorial skills. You’re the ultimate escalation point for grammar and editorial questions!
- Hunger for data and analytics. We use Google Sheets, Tableau, and Airtable to manage our internal content analytics; working with these to improve outcomes should excite you.
- Project and production management. With ~100 posts/month – and that number increasing on your watch – content production must go smoothly. You’ll both keep abreast of the project management, and continually identify and remove bottlenecks in the production process.
- Significant overlap with UK/EU hours (GMT/CET). Realistically, being based in the UK or EMEA is an advantage; we are however happy to consider candidates with significant overlap with European working hours such as the US East Coast.
Soft skill requirements:
- Fantastic communication skills: Leadership in remote work relies on mutual trust, so frequent and clear written communication is essential.
- High level of self-awareness: Ellipsis will harness all of your experience to improve Content Growth; you’ll in turn have a lot to get up to speed with and will need to have the self-awareness to understand where to push for improvements and where to defer.
- Proven organisational and problem-solving skills: Content Growth is a complex production process, and it’ll get more complex on your watch as we scale. You must be extremely organised. You’ll need to be up to speed with all of our content work day-to-day, alongside the leadership and management requirements of the role.
- Effective prioritisation: The scope for this role is wide! You’ll need to juggle your different responsibilities and the priorities of the business. You’ll need to understand the tradeoff of different tasks, and delegate and prioritise effectively to make them happen.
- Self-driven work ethic: This role requires you to take on board a lot of information about how Content Growth our clients work to start, and then you’ll have a lot of autonomy to run the Content team.
Bonus points if you have:
- Experience with Leadership in a remote-work environment
- Digital marketing agency experience
- Advanced skills in Google Sheets, Excel, and/or Airtable
Benefits
- This is a full-time, 100% remote role. Work from home, or the beach!
- Competitive, full-time salary with pension, benchmarked to UK rates and based on experience. The range for this role is: £60-£72k/year
- 28 days of paid holiday
- An additional 1 paid holiday day a year with each year of tenure, up to a maximum of 5 additional days
- 4-day work week, once a month (we’re current mid-trial for this!)
- Genuinely flexible working
- Regular team retreats (~2 per year); we’ve most recently been to Budapest, Madrid, and Edinburgh
- Time and budget for learning and development
- Enhanced maternity/paternity leave, and sick pay
- You’ll work for a sustainable, ethical company: we are aiming to become a B Corp by the end of 2024
The application process:
It’s important we find the best candidate for this position, and our selection process will reflect this.
Much of our company Wiki is externally accessible, and you’re encouraged to read through this before applying. We have a very useful guide to our interview process available here. This tells you what we’re looking for and reading this will significantly increase your chance of success!
We’ll review applications on a rolling basis and plan to start interviews after the closing date. There’s thus no benefit to rushing to apply: we will bias heavily towards your application’s answers rather than your CV, and we’d love for you to take your time.
We’re fortunate to receive a large volume of applications. You can make your application stand out by paying special attention to the main responsibilities of this role, and “how to apply”. If you think you’re a fit, or could be a fit – go for it!
We use video calls for interviews. You’ll have video interviews using Google Meet, including with your prospective line manager and the Managing Director.
We understand that this is as much you interviewing us, as the other way round. Throughout the interview process, we’re extremely happy to answer your questions about the business, working here, and the future of the company.
The final stage of our hiring process is a paid test project, which will be similar to work you could expect to do if you were hired. We’ll give you a week to complete the project, but expect that you’ll only need ~4 hours.
Following the completion of trial projects, we’ll ask for professional references from a previous manager and co-worker. We ask candidates to introduce us to their references, for a 10 minute call or email conversation. We then expect to move to make an offer quickly.
We do great work for clients and are building an ethical business that lets everyone do their best work. If you think you could be the next person to join our team, please apply :)
How to apply
Please apply through Workable: https://apply.workable.com/getellipsis. We will decide who progresses to the next stage based on the form you submit, and your CV.
Please give us a good reason to select you! Taking the time to research the role, what we’re looking for, what we do, and what you can do for us will increase your chance of success. Your cover letter is where you have the space to do this.
Ellipsis is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity.
Whilst we love technology and sit at the leading edge of its adoption (we automate hundreds of thousands of actions a month internally), we want to hear from you rather than from ChatGPT.
We will be screening applications for AI-generated content and will automatically disqualify AI-generated applications.
The deadline for submission is the end of the day, on 30th April 2024. We’ll be in touch with all candidates, following the close of applications.
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