Head of Programmatic Trading Europe
Role Summary
The Head of Trading owns the performance, standards, and people leadership of the European trading team, ensuring campaigns are executed to the highest standard across markets while acting as the internal authority on programmatic and platform best practice. The role blends hands-on trading (60% of time), team management, resource allocation, and cross-functional partnership with Client Services and other departments to drive results for Tier 1 clients.
Core Duties
Team & delivery leadership
Oversee the day-to-day delivery of the European trading team, providing priorities, guidance, and mentorship to ensure delivery and performance targets are met
Own team development end-to-end: hiring, coaching, performance management, and career-pathing for traders
Allocate trading resources according to business priorities and workload across countries
Responsible for the outputs of the trading department across all business units (countries)
Trading & platform execution
Execute campaign setup across platforms, monitor performance, and optimize strategies (~60% of time)
Establish and deploy best practices across campaign setup, QA/troubleshooting, and reporting, acting as the internal authority on programmatic buying
Drive structured testing and experimentation across DSPs and partner platforms, evaluating results rigorously to inform trading strategy
Contribute to improving the internal monitoring and reporting suite
Partnerships & stakeholder management
Manage the relationship with external partners supplementing the team when business requires it
Collaborate with the Head of CS/Account Managers to develop media trading strategies aligned with the campaign goals and objectives of Tier 1 clients
Collaborate cross-functionally with creative, account management, and product teams to align strategy and execution
Feed trading insights and advertiser feedback back into product and platform roadmap discussions
Market awareness
Stay current on industry trends, advertising technologies, platform updates, and new tools to keep the agency competitive
What You Need to Succeed
Experience
At least 8 years of professional experience on a trading desk (agency or sales house)
3+ years of successful experience as a team leader/manager in programmatic digital advertising
International experience is a plus
Track record of establishing and scaling trading best practices, playbooks, and QA processes across multiple markets
Technical & domain knowledge
Hands-on experience with the main DSPs available in the market (DV360,TTD...)
Solid understanding of the mobile ecosystem (mandatory)
Understanding of the digital out-of-home (DOOH) ecosystem; hands-on experience is a plus
Familiarity with a leading brand safety, fraud prevention, or attention measurement platform
Strong quantitative and analytical skills, comfortable working with large datasets; coding/scripting experience is a plus
Soft skills & languages
Strong relationship-building and negotiation skills, both internally and with external partners
Ability to work effectively in a cross-functional, matrixed environment
English and French proficiency (mandatory)