Senior Marketing Manager AIO Strategist

About Us

Sophos is a cybersecurity leader defending 600,000 organizations globally with an AI-driven platform and expert-led services. Sophos meets organizations wherever they are in their security maturity and grows with them to defeat cyberattacks. Its solutions combine machine learning, automation, and real-time threat intelligence with frontline human expertise from Sophos X-Ops to deliver advanced, 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response.

Sophos offers industry-leading managed detection and response (MDR) alongside a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity technologies — including endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and next-gen SIEM. Together with expert advisory services, these capabilities help organizations proactively reduce risk and respond faster, with the visibility and scalability needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Sophos goes to market with a global partner ecosystem, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), resellers and distributors, marketplace integrations, and cyber risk partners, giving organizations the flexibility to choose trusted relationships when securing their business. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com .

Role Summary

Sophos is hiring an AIO (AI Optimization) Strategist to own how Sophos shows up and gets cited across AI search and answer engines. This is a new role and the first dedicated hire of a planned AIO/GEO function inside Sophos Growth Marketing.

This is not an SEO role with AI bolted on. If your last five years have been about traditional rankings and you are starting to read about LLMs, this role is not for you. We are looking for someone whose center of gravity is AI and large language models — how they retrieve, rank, summarize, and cite — and have a strong technical SEO foundation as the toolbox underneath that expertise.

What You Will Do

You will build and run Sophos's AIO program end to end. Specifically:

• Strategy and program design: Define Sophos's AIO operating model — what we measure, how we earn citations, where we invest, and how AIO interlocks with SEO, content, PR, analyst relations, and product marketing. Build the roadmap and the vision; you will be expected to have an opinion on what we should and should not do.
• Visibility and citation measurement: Stand up the visibility tracking system — the prompts, platforms, metrics, and reporting cadence that tell Sophos and its leadership how we are showing up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and emerging surfaces. Establish baselines, define targets, and report progress quarterly.
• Content engineering for AI surfaces: Partner with Content, Product Marketing, and Web to engineer Sophos content (sophos.com pages, comparison content, customer stories, X-Ops research, blog content) so it is retrievable, extractable, and citable by LLMs.
• Earned media and citation seeding: Work with PR, Analyst Relations, Social Media, and Customer Marketing to build a coordinated citation-seeding program.
• Competitive AI visibility intelligence: Run continuous monitoring against our competitors across the AI surfaces. Identify where Sophos is being outperformed, where we are being misrepresented, and where the structural opportunities are. Bring back insights, not just data.
• Cross-functional partnership: AIO does not work as a silo. You will partner across Strategic GTM, Growth Marketing, Regional Marketing, and Sophos Senior Management Team to drive strategy. You will not manage these teams, but you will need to influence them and earn their trust.
• Education and thought leadership: Make AIO legible to the rest of Sophos. Run brown-bags, build internal playbooks, and represent Sophos externally (at industry events, on partner content, in analyst briefings) as the company's AIO voice.

Required Qualifications

What You Will Bring

• 3–5 years of hands-on, AI-first experience in GEO, AEO, LLMO, AI search strategy, prompt engineering, RAG content architecture, or applied AI in a marketing/search context.
• Practical understanding of LLM behavior, including RAG, embeddings, context limits, citations, hallucinations, and the distinctions between training, fine-tuning, and grounding.
• Strong technical SEO foundation, including structured data (JSON‑LD), crawlability and indexability, site architecture, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, log analysis, robots.txt/sitemaps, and Search Console.
• Experience with AI citation tracking tools (e.g., Profound, Peec AI, Goodie, Otterly, Athena HQ, BrightEdge AI) or a comparable custom solution.
• Hands-on prompt engineering experience across major LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot), using LLMs as research, analysis, and content‑engineering tools.
• Strong analytical skills, including GA4, Search Console, KPI design, and separating visibility signals from pipeline impact (advanced spreadsheet skills required; SQL a plus).
• B2B experience, ideally in B2B SaaS, technology, or cybersecurity, with familiarity with complex, multi‑stakeholder buying journeys.
• Independent judgment and a defensible point of view in an emerging, noisy discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in cybersecurity or highly technical buyer markets.
• Familiarity with channel, MSP, or MSSP go‑to‑market models.
• Experience building a new function or program from scratch.
• Proven cross‑functional influence without direct authority.
• Public thought leadership in AI search, GEO, AEO, or LLMO (writing, talks, podcasts, OSS, audits, or prompt libraries).
• Experience with enterprise, headless, or composable CMS platforms.
• Working knowledge of agent-based AI workflows and AI agent content consumption.

In the United States, the base salary for this role ranges from $128,000 to $213,000. In Canada, the base salary for this role ranges from $125,000 to $209,000. In addition to base salary, we offer additional compensation including bonus eligibility and a comprehensive benefits package.  A candidate’s specific pay within this range will depend on a variety of factors, including job- related skills, training, location, experience, relevant education, certifications, and other business and organizational needs.

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Ready to Join Us?

At Sophos, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives to fuel innovation. Research shows that candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't check every box in a job description. We challenge that notion. Your unique experiences and skills might be exactly what we need to enhance our team. Don't let a checklist hold you back – we encourage you to apply.

What's Great About Sophos?

• Sophos operates a remote-first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. However, some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach. While we are a remote first organization, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship.
• Our people – we innovate and create, all of which are accompanied by a great sense of fun and team spirit
• Employee-led diversity and inclusion networks that build community and provide education and advocacy
• Annual charity and fundraising initiatives and volunteer days for employees to support local communities
• Global employee sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint
• Global fitness and trivia competitions to keep our bodies and minds sharp
• Global wellbeing days for employees to relax and recharge
• Monthly wellbeing webinars and training to support employee health and wellbeing

Our Commitment To You

We’re proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we’re committed to ensuring equality of opportunity. We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team. All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation. We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know.

Data Protection

If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos. If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights. For more information on Sophos’ data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy Cybersecurity as a Service Delivered | Sophos

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.