Answer engine optimization, the search kind. Copy the template, edit the brackets, and post it.
An SEO/AEO (answer engine optimization) job description should name the AI answers you want to win, the SEO work they’ll own, the prompts they’ll track, and the 90-day goals. Post pay: AI search roles show a $119,500 to $167,500 median published range (Kaleigh Moore, October 2026). GrowthPair places full-time SEO Marketers who cover AEO for about $4,000 a month, all-in.
AEO stands for answer engine optimization: getting your brand quoted when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google’s AI Overviews a question. The same three letters also stand for American Eagle Outfitters and, in customs, Authorized Economic Operator. This page is about search.
We read six U.S. postings with AEO in the title or the job in October 2026. They fall into three kinds. Pick one before you write a word.
| Kind | What they own | Example posting and posted base |
|---|---|---|
| SEO marketer who covers AEO | Technical SEO, content structure, and tracking AI mentions and citations for a set of sites | NBCUniversal, "AEO/SEO Manager," $85,000 to $115,000. Asks for 4+ years in SEO, technical SEO, or AEO. |
| AEO content strategist | The blog and editorial plan, publishing, and getting cited by the sources AI answers pull from | Chime, "AEO Content Strategist," $105,000 to $145,000. Asks for 5+ years in editorial, content strategy, or SEO content. |
| AEO or discoverability lead | Prompt tracking across engines, experiments, and routing fixes to PR, social, product marketing, and web teams | Intel, "Discoverability Lead (GEO/AEO/SEO)," $121,000 to $206,000 (since closed). Spring Health, "AEO & GEO Lead," $153,500 to $177,000. |
A senior version of the third kind runs SEO and AEO for a whole company. Airbnb’s Senior Growth Marketing Lead (SEO, AEO, GEO) posts $196,000 to $245,000 and asks for 10+ years in SEO and strong SQL. A fourth kind works at an AEO vendor and serves its clients: AirOps’ Senior AEO Strategy Lead, since closed, posted $160,000 to $215,000. If you’re a brand hiring for your own site, that template won’t fit.
Most teams under a few hundred people want the first kind. The template below is written for it. If you’re still deciding between one hire and two, read AEO vs SEO specialist first.
Copy this, then edit everything in brackets.
```
SEO/AEO Specialist
[Remote / Hybrid / City] · Full-time · [Pay range]
About the role
We’re hiring an SEO/AEO specialist to get [Company] found on Google and quoted in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews. Today, [describe the gap, e.g. "we rank for our category terms, but ChatGPT recommends three competitors and not us" or "nobody owns technical SEO"]. You’ll own the fix, from crawlability to content to reporting. You’ll report to [Head of Marketing / Head of Content / founder].
What you’ll do
What you’ll use
[Google Search Console], [GA4], [Ahrefs / Semrush], [an AI visibility tool: Profound / Peec AI / Semrush / AirOps], [Webflow / WordPress / Contentful], [ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity].
What you bring
How we’ll measure you
Pay
[Range]. [Benefits.]
```
Most lines in "What you’ll do" come from the six postings above. The prompt-set line is the one most templates miss. Without a fixed set of prompts, there’s nothing to measure.
Most AEO postings carry lines that scare off good candidates or let weak ones through. Here’s what we left out.
Price the kind of role you picked, not the acronym in the title. Here’s the base pay each posting we read offered, next to Kaleigh Moore’s median midpoint for the closest level on her AI Search Jobs board (94 listings with pay, October 19, 2026).
| Kind of role | Posted base in the postings we read | Moore’s median midpoint for the level |
|---|---|---|
| SEO marketer who covers AEO | NBCUniversal: $85,000 to $115,000 | Specialist and associate: about $93,750. Manager: about $128,000. |
| AEO content strategist | Chime: $105,000 to $145,000 | Manager: about $128,000 |
| AEO or discoverability lead | Intel (closed): $121,000 to $206,000. Spring Health: $153,500 to $177,000. | Lead, principal, and senior: about $156,050 |
| Company-wide senior lead | Airbnb: $196,000 to $245,000 | Lead, principal, and senior: about $156,050. Director and above: about $185,000. |
Two things move the number inside a level. Scope is one: Moore found manager roles posted anywhere from $62,800 to $250,000. Location is the other: New York and the San Francisco Bay Area held 82 of the 140 roles with a listed city. Benefits come on top of base. For the monthly cost of these roles with benefits, plus agency retainers, see how to hire an SEO/AEO specialist.
A job description gets you applicants. Before you book a single interview, ask for proof against each line. Here’s what to look for.
| JD line | Ask applicants to send | A strong application has |
|---|---|---|
| Technical SEO | One fix they shipped and how they confirmed it worked | A named issue (indexing, canonicals, schema), the change, and the Search Console result after |
| Answer-ready pages | Two pages they wrote or restructured | A direct answer in the first lines, a number with a source, and a link you can check |
| Prompt tracking | A sample report, with client names removed if needed | A fixed prompt list, results by engine, and a change over time |
| Off-site presence | One third-party mention they earned or fixed | The source, why AI tools cite it, and what they did |
| Measurement | How they’d report AEO to you | AI visibility next to traffic and leads, plus a plain note on what they can’t attribute |
Then run the interview. Our guide to hiring an SEO/AEO specialist has the interview checks, including a live AI audit of your category.
When we’re the wrong call: if you need a senior leader who owns SEO and AEO across a large company and works with executives, like Airbnb’s 10+ year role, post the job yourself and hire in the U.S. We place full-time marketers who do the hands-on work.
We call this role SEO Marketer. Your SEO Marketer works full-time for your team only, in your time zone, for about $4,000 a month, all-in. That covers their pay, payroll, benefits, and HR. They own technical SEO, keyword research, content briefs, and optimization for AI answer engines like ChatGPT, in Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Search Console, and GA4. We vet SEO Marketers on AI search before you meet them. Every candidate goes through five steps: a resume screen, a phone interview, a proctored skills assessment, a live interview with a marketer, and your interview. About 1.5% of applicants are accepted, and every one passes a C1 English test. For the full cost comparison, see what an SEO specialist costs to hire.
The AI answers you want to appear in, the SEO work they’ll own, the prompt set they’ll track, how you’ll measure them at 30, 60, and 90 days, and a pay range. Lead with the gap, like a competitor ChatGPT recommends instead of you.
They keep the site crawlable, rewrite pages to answer questions first, track a fixed set of buyer prompts across AI tools, and work to get the brand onto the third-party pages those tools cite. Then they report what changed.
Count years in SEO, since AEO is too new to ask for many years of it. Posts we read asked for 3 to 5 years (Intel), 4+ years (NBCUniversal), 5+ years (Spring Health and Chime), and 10+ years for Airbnb’s senior lead.
Match it to the kind of role. Manager-level postings we read, like NBCUniversal and Chime, ran $85,000 to $145,000. Kaleigh Moore’s board shows a median midpoint of about $156,050 for lead and senior AI search roles (October 2026).
Use one, and put the others in the description. "AEO" appeared in about half of AI search listings Kaleigh Moore tracked. "SEO/AEO Specialist" tells candidates you want both and avoids the American Eagle mix-up.
Citations and mentions on a fixed prompt set, tracked by engine, plus organic traffic and leads from search and AI referrals. NBCUniversal’s posting lists AI mentions and citations, sentiment, and clicks and sign-ups. If you’re unsure you need the role at all, read AEO vs SEO specialist.
