Director / Sr. Director - Strategy

Tealbox Digital · Gurgaon · Hybrid, 3 days a week · 5–10 years' experience

₹20–26 lakh fixed + up to 20% variable

Please fill the form to apply: https://forms.gle/zi11r958i7hjneRQA

The bet we're making

Most of what a media buyer does today - building campaigns, structuring accounts, reading reports, spotting the obvious optimisation - is going to be absorbed by AI. Not in five years. Now.

If that's right, the scarce skill in an agency stops being platform expertise. It becomes two things. Knowing what to point the systems at. And being the person a client actually trusts.

We're hiring for that role. You'd own a portfolio of client businesses. You'd run them through an AI layer we're building. You'd be the human accountable for what comes out. Not an account manager who uses AI. Someone whose job is to get far more done per person than the industry thinks possible.

About Tealbox

We're a paid media agency for B2B SaaS and DTC brands, on Meta, Google and YouTube. Accounts run from ₹5 lakh to ₹5 crore a month in ad spend. Small team, serious about the craft. We're working out what an agency should be once the execution gets automated.

What you'd own

• The portfolio. A book of client businesses, end to end. Measured on whether clients stay and grow and on the portfolio's margin - not on what you shipped.
• The client relationship. You're the person they call. You bring a point of view they didn't ask for. You tell them the truth when it's inconvenient. You say no when no is right.
• Quality control at scale. The hard part. Twenty accounts of AI-generated analysis means twenty accounts of plausible-looking output. Some of it is wrong. All of it is spending someone's money. You're the check.
• The AI layer, applied. We build the systems. You decide how they're used on each account. You spot where they're working and where they're producing confident nonsense. You tell us what to build next.
• A small pod. A couple of people plus the systems. You coach them and set how the pod works.

Who we're looking for

Five to ten years in account management, client servicing, performance marketing or growth. We care more about the shape of your judgment than the label on your CV.

• Business judgment. You see what actually drives a client's business. When you see a number, you have an instinct for whether it's plausible before you check.
• Client trust. You've held senior relationships and kept them. You've challenged a client and been right.
• AI fluency you can show. Not "I use ChatGPT." You've changed how you work. You know where the tools break. You've built something other people now use.
• The scepticism to catch a wrong answer. You don't accept confident output because it's well formatted.

On advertising knowledge, read carefully. You need to read performance data with confidence. You need to hold your own with a media buyer. You need to be credible with a client about why performance moved. That's a real bar and we'll test it. You do not need to build campaigns yourself. We think the buying craft moves into the systems. What doesn't move is judgment about whether the output is any good. If you're a strong media buyer who wants to keep building campaigns, this job will frustrate you.

Compensation

Fixed: ₹20–26 lakh a year, depending on experience. Variable: up to 20% of fixed, paid twice a year. Three targets: client retention in your portfolio, portfolio margin, and accounts under management.

Why this is worth your time

• You'd be early on the thing everyone's about to do. Every agency will claim to be AI-native within two years. You'd have actually done it, with proof.
• Your output is your market value. If you can run twenty-five accounts where a peer runs six, you're worth several times that peer in the market. The variable is built to reflect that. This role makes you more valuable, not more locked in.
• Direct line to the founder building the system you use. Your feedback goes straight to the person building it.

The honest version

• The AI layer runs on a few accounts today. It's being expanded. Some of what you need will be ready when you join. Some won't. You'd shape it from real problems.
• The ramp is real. You start with five to eight accounts, not twenty. Twenty to thirty is where this goes within a year, if the systems deliver. That's the direction, not the starting line.
• Gurgaon-based, hybrid, three days a week in office; days agreed with Varun.
• We work to the outcome. When a client outcome, a launch or a live problem needs attention outside normal hours, we deal with it. That expectation grows with seniority. Three things come with it. Your manager owes you recovery time after a heavy stretch. Anything that causes repeated out-of-hours work gets fixed as a process problem, not absorbed. And nobody here measures commitment by response time at midnight.
• We're mid-repair. We're a founder-led business fixing how it manages people. You'd be joining during, not after.
• Nobody has done this job before. Including us.

How we'll hire

Four rounds, quick, and you'll know where you stand at every step.

1. Track record and business judgment: A conversation.
2. Assignment: A three-hour take-home exercise.
3. Client leadership: Assignment discussion and a live client role-play.
4. Values and ways of working: A two-way conversation.

If this sounds like the kind of challenge you’d enjoy, we’d love to hear from you.