Senior Director of Media

Hybrid, Denver or Carbondale, CO | 2 days a week in office required

At Backbone, we live by the mantra that passion drives results. We are insiders of the outside and it’s our job to advocate for the brands we believe in. But to us, it's more than just a job, because we live those brands day in and day out. We've always believed it's possible to bridge the gap between work and personal passions, and our team is full of talented people who share in that vision. Ours is a team of smart, driven marketers, drawn together by a passion for the outdoors and doing great work for great brands. Find out more about us at backbone.media

The Job

• The Senior Director of Media will join Backbone’s media leadership team, co-leading the media practice across brand and paid, ensuring every channel we touch ladders up to a single, cohesive story for our clients. This is a builder and connector role: you are someone who can shape the strategic vision for how audiences are reached across Connected TV, Linear TV, Out-of-Home, Audio, Direct Partnerships, Paid Social, and Search, while also running the operational engine that turns that vision into disciplined, profitable execution.
• This person sits at the intersection of brand strategy, creative, and media investment. They think in terms of full-funnel integration, not channel silos, and they're comfortable being both the strategic architect in the room with a client and the person building the process that makes a growing team run well. They bring an entrepreneurial mindset to agency growth, a coach's instinct for developing talent, and the judgment to know when a bold idea is worth the risk.
  
  

The Work

• Drive the development of integrated media strategies and deliver senior-level strategic counsel to clients: Connecting consumer insight, category trends, and channel expertise to recommendations that serve broader business objectives and drive measurable ROI.
• Partner with client and strategy leadership to define audience strategy: who we need to reach, what we want them to feel or do, and which combination of channels will deliver that message most efficiently.
• Drive new business development and revenue growth in collaboration with sales and marketing teams. This includes overseeing proposals, staffing plans, and client engagements from pipeline through close, with a focus on profitability and long-term client retention.
• Own key account management across priority client relationships, serving as senior escalation point and driving retention, satisfaction, and year-over-year growth of strategic accounts.
• Oversee the translation of strategic insight into channel architecture and media plans across linear TV, CTV, OOH, radio, streaming audio, direct partnerships, paid social, search, and emerging formats.
• Own P&L accountability for a portfolio of clients, overseeing budgeting, forecasting, and resource planning using Forecast and Harvest, driving margin, utilization, and staffing efficiency across the team.
• Develop and refine agency processes for strategic planning, media buying, briefing, QA, measurement, optimization, and reporting, building consistency, rigor, and efficiency across all media efforts.
• Maintain and grow relationships with media vendors, networks, publishers, and partners, securing preferred rates, added value, and cost efficiencies.
• Manage and mentor a team of Media Strategists and channel leads, cultivating the next generation of leaders through feedback, goal-setting, and hands-on coaching.
• Collaborate closely with Directors and Senior Directors across other disciplines (Programmatic, Paid Social, Search, Strategy) to ensure channel integration, unified measurement, and efficient use of resources.
• Oversee media investment negotiations and ensure financial accuracy in billing, reconciliation, and cost management.
• Actively drive innovation and test-and-learn approaches to emerging media formats and measurement methodologies, evaluating impact against cost and return.
• Conduct quarterly business reviews across Backbone’s top 15 Paid Media clients, identifying scope alignment, margin opportunities, and efficiency gains to drive account health and profitability.
  
  

Leadership Impact

• Inspire big-picture strategic thinking within the team while holding clarity on execution and accountability for results.
• Operationalize media strategy processes to enable high-functioning planning across paid and earned disciplines.
• Champion an entrepreneurial, solution-oriented mindset, identifying new opportunities for agency growth and client success.
• Serve as a coach and mentor, empowering all team members from strategists to senior managers to take ownership of their work.
• Deliver direct, constructive feedback that strengthens performance, alignment, and collaboration across teams.
• Forecast and manage team hours and staffing needs based on client scopes and fees, monitoring utilization and pacing in Harvest.
• Act as a change catalyst, bringing fresh thinking and leading the evolution of Backbone's media offering.
  
  

The Essentials

• Bachelor's degree.
• 10+ years of experience in media planning and buying, with deep experience across brand media channels (TV, CTV, OOH, Audio, Direct Partnerships, Sponsorships, Content Integration) and working fluency in earned/social ecosystems.
• At least 3–5 years in a leadership or management role with a track record of developing and motivating high-performing teams.
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically, lead collaboratively, and drive change in a fast-paced agency environment.
• Strong command of measurement tools and frameworks for both brand and performance media (reach/frequency, MMM, brand lift, awareness studies, attribution).
• Exceptional writing, communication, negotiation, storytelling, and presentation skills.
• Proven success fostering innovation and elevating team and agency performance through leadership and feedback.
• Detail-oriented, organized, and comfortable managing multiple complex client relationships and projects simultaneously.
• Commercial mindset with comfort owning revenue targets and pitch outcomes.
  
  

The Extra Mile

• Experience in outdoor and active lifestyle brands, and tourism clients.
• Hands-on experience integrating earned media: PR, affiliate, and influencer/creator into broader media strategy.
• Working knowledge of digital and performance media channels to ensure cross-channel fluency.
• Working knowledge and experience with Retail Media and Cooperative Advertising.
• Familiarity with attribution and cross-channel measurement tools, as well as industry platforms such as Muck Rack, CreatorIQ, or Sprinklr.
• A natural curiosity and sense of humor.
• Passion for the outdoors and an active lifestyle.
  
  

What Success Looks Like

• Cohesive, integrated media strategies that strengthen brand outcomes across paid and earned channels.
• Increased pitch win rate and stronger, larger client engagements.
• Elevated team performance, development, and retention.
• Media processes and standards that scale efficiently as the team grows.
  
  

Compensation: At time of posting, $140,000 – $200,000 annual base salary, based on experience

Comprehensive Benefits:

• Medical coverage
• Dental coverage
• Vision coverage
• 401 (k) match
• Wellness benefit
• Home office stipend
• Professional development/education assistance
• Paid volunteer hours
• Parental leave
• Flexible schedule
• Company-wide offsites
• Remote/hybrid workplace
  
  

Perks: Our culture creates the vibrant energy that fuels what we do and what we stand for. Flex time, powder days, wellness incentives, flexible work arrangements, team hikes, floats, runs and playtime

Be you, on our team. We seek to build an inclusive team and culture that values diverse lived experiences, backgrounds and skill sets.

About Backbone Media: We are the country's leading active lifestyle media agency. For nearly 30 years, Backbone has partnered with brands big and small to develop and execute effective, integrated media strategies. With offices in Carbondale and Denver, Colorado. Backbone has been consistently included on Outside Magazine’s “Best Places to Work” list.

Everything we do is backed by an internal culture of true believers with passionate, personal connections to the outdoor world. We don’t stand still. We can’t help but protect the environment and access to the outdoors in our actions. And we get stoked on amplifying the brands that want to make big things happen.

Backbone provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. We consider applicants of all backgrounds — if you're excited about what we're doing but don't meet every criterion, please don't let that discourage you from applying.

Please no phone calls regarding job inquiries.