Scope of the role
IAB Europe is recruiting a full-time Digital Advertising Technology Director who will support the Association’s mission to ensure regulation is based on a good understanding of how digital advertising technology works and contributes to its ability to deliver economic and social good, facilitate legal compliance, and remove technical and business barriers to its uptake by advertisers, agencies and publishers in Europe.
This is a leadership role that will focus on providing technical expertise and delivering strategic advice to IAB Europe’s committees, taskforces, working groups, and members, helping surface the needs of the European digital advertising and marketing industry from a technology point of view, and collaborating with technical standards organisations, including those outside of Europe, to ensure those needs are reflected.
Specifically, the Technology Director would be expected to
- Develop a strategic, rolling 12-month plan that identifies the key technical challenges facing the advertising ecosystem and provides IAB Europe’s management team with direction as to where focus should be applied and what this focus should be covering, including (but not limited to) the following examples:
- Replacement identifier following demise the third-party cookie;
- Supply Chain Optimisation;
- Transparency in the supply chain;
- Impact of AI.
- Take on a co-leadership role within IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee, Brand Advertising Committee and Post Third-Party Cookie Task Force to deliver expert technical advice to inform the drawing up of annual work plans and execution of same.
- Collaborate with, and provide technical insight to, IAB Europe’s Policy and Legal committees to help them understand and analyse the technical impacts that existing and proposed regulation has on the functioning of digital advertising technologies and, conversely, the expected impacts that new and emerging technologies may have on efforts to comply with regulation.
- Collaborate with IAB Europe’s legal and compliance team to develop technical tools for compliance and act as the conduit between IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab, where appropriate, for the delivery of technical products that support IAB Europe’s Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF). This includes, but is not limited to,
- Providing assistance in the development of a TCF vendor compliance assessment tool;
- Providing assistance in the oversight, development and technical management of the in-house IAB Europe CMP compliance tool;
- Assisting in the review of all technical specifications and associated updates related to the TCF;
- Reviewing and, if necessary, providing technical guidance that will support the Tech Lab in maintaining a robust, up-to-date TCF code library;
- Providing IAB Europe with considered understanding of the implications of, and how the TCF will need to be prepared and maintained for, the demise of the 3rd Party Cookie.
To deliver the above, the successful candidate will have a deep understanding of the online advertising “ecosystem” and the technology involved in the delivery of programmatic advertising. A relevant academic background (e.g. in software engineering) and at least three years of direct professional experience in one or more companies operating in the sector are minimum requirements, as is good written and spoken English.
Experience in multi-cultural environments, ability to work autonomously, and a willingness to spontaneously identify and take on new challenges in a dynamic and demanding professional environment is important. Alongside this, the role will need to confidently and with authority contribute to large and diverse working groups and feel comfortable when in some instances leadership of these groups is required.
The position could be based in Belgium (Brussels) or elsewhere in Europe. The position reports to IAB Europe’s CEO and will require collaboration with colleagues on the policy, legal compliance and industry services teams within IAB Europe.
Capabilities
Knowledge, skills and experience
- Knowledge of the ad tech supply chain and the communities it comprises and serves
- Aptitude for owning responsibility of technical decisions and direction for a number of different projects
- Ability to manage team demands on his/her time and willingness to delegate technical execution or responsibilities when appropriate
- Ability to consider both business and technical considerations when designing and developing solutions
- Ability to lead the improvement of the association’s technical knowledge and reputation for same
- Ability to provide thought leadership as it relates to emerging technologies and readying the industry for positively integrating the same
Technical / functional skills
- Basic understanding of coding languages such as CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, and JSON – the necessity to code is not pre-requisite but it is important that the role understands the functionality and how to read code
- Experience in overseeing database creation and maintenance
- Understanding of cloud services with specific understanding of those provided by AWS
- Broad knowledge of the software development process and its technologies particularly open source and the management of access to open source through tools such as GitHub
- Experience of common project management methodologies such as “Agile” and technical project management that is involved in open source development
Personal attributes
- Strong communicator
- Able to interact confidently with senior management, both internally and externally
- Able to think strategically and with a good sense of the needs of the business
- Organisationally agile
- Interested in the technical, business and legal/policy challenges currently confronting the digital advertising and marketing industries
- Customer-focused
- Cross-cultural collaborator
- Structured and well-organised
- Engaging and approachable
Interested candidates should email Marjorie Veys with a covering letter and CV.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of media, technology and marketing companies and national IABs, its mission is to lead political representation and promote industry collaboration to deliver frameworks, standards and industry programmes that enable business to thrive in the European market.
