Director, Performance & Digital Marketing

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on guarding wellness and giving every person more time free from cancer. Founded in 2012, Guardant® is transforming patient care and accelerating new cancer therapies by providing critical insights into what drives disease through its advanced blood and tissue tests, real-world data and AI analytics. Guardant tests help improve outcomes across all stages of care, including screening to find cancer early, monitoring for recurrence in early-stage cancer, and treatment selection for patients with advanced cancer. For more information, visit guardanthealth.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook. 

The Senior Director, Performance & Digital Marketing will set strategy and lead execution for all paid media, advertising, and digital marketing across Guardant Health’s screening division, including for: Consumer, Healthcare Provider (HCP), and Health Systems audiences.

A central responsibility of this role is leadership of Shield’s significant multi-million-dollar national direct-to-consumer (DTC) media investment across television, streaming, digital video, search, social, programmatic, CRM, and emerging channels. This leader will be accountable for ensuring that the investment builds the Shield brand, increases consumer demand, drives measurable action, and contributes to commercial growth.

Beyond DTC, the Senior Director will oversee the integrated media and digital ecosystem for HCP and Health Systems audiences, including professional media, account-based marketing, web, CRM, marketing automation, organic social, and conversion optimization.

As a senior member of the Screening Marketing leadership team, this individual will establish portfolio-wide investment priorities, performance standards, agency models, measurement frameworks, and digital capabilities. The role requires strong commercial judgment, financial discipline, cross-functional collaboration, executive influence, and the ability to translate a significant marketing investment into measurable business impact.

The ideal candidate is an accomplished performance and digital marketing leader who combines strategic vision, analytical rigor, and organizational leadership. They must be able to influence senior stakeholders, challenge agency and internal thinking, make disciplined investment decisions, and build a high-performing team in a fast-moving, highly regulated environment.

Key Responsibilities

DTC Media Investment and Growth Leadership

• Own the strategy, deployment, optimization, and performance of Shield’s significant multi-million-dollar DTC media investment, one of the most important growth investments within the Shield business.
• Set the national consumer media strategy across television, streaming, online video, search, social, programmatic, audio, local media, and emerging channels.
• Determine investment levels, channel allocation, audience strategy, geographic prioritization, flighting, reach, frequency, and optimization approaches.
• Balance long-term brand building with near-term demand generation and measurable patient action.
• Partner with Consumer Marketing leadership to translate brand and audience strategy into an integrated media plan that builds awareness, creates urgency, and motivates patients to ask for Shield by name.
• Advise the Vice President of Marketing and senior commercial leadership on major investment decisions, trade-offs, risks, and opportunities.
• Lead executive-level reviews of DTC performance, clearly articulating what is working, what is not, and where investment should be increased, redirected, or reduced.
• Ensure rigorous budget stewardship, including forecasting, pacing, agency fees, production implications, working versus non-working spend, and financial reconciliation.
• Build a measurement framework that connects DTC investment to awareness, consideration, site engagement, patient action, provider demand, test orders, and incremental business impact.
• Establish a disciplined testing agenda across audiences, creative, messaging, channels, media weight, sequencing, and geographic markets.

Enterprise Media and Advertising Leadership

• Set the portfolio-wide advertising and paid media strategy from Screening across Consumer, HCP, and Health Systems audiences.
• Establish an integrated media architecture across national consumer advertising, HCP professional media, Health Systems and account-based marketing, local market activation, and emerging channels.
• Partner with Consumer, HCP, and Health Systems Marketing leaders to translate audience strategies and business priorities into cohesive, differentiated media plans.
• Ensure that DTC, HCP, and Health Systems media strategies reinforce one another while addressing the distinct needs of patients, providers, and healthcare organizations.
• Serve as the senior internal authority on media strategy, investment effectiveness, agency performance, and optimization.
• Lead media agency strategy, scope, selection, governance, and performance management, holding partners accountable for strategic quality, innovation, operational excellence, transparency, and measurable business impact.
• Monitor competitive activity, category dynamics, media consumption trends, and regulatory developments to protect and extend Shield’s leadership position.

Performance and Measurement

• Define the performance framework for Shield’s media and digital investments, including business objectives, KPIs, benchmarks, testing plans, attribution approaches, and optimization standards.
• Partner with Analytics and Finance to connect media performance to patient demand, provider engagement, account adoption, test orders, screening completion, and other commercial outcomes.
• Advance incrementality, attribution, marketing-mix, and audience-quality measurement as Shield’s data maturity evolves.
• Lead quarterly and annual performance reviews, identifying where to accelerate, redirect, or reduce investment.
• Ensure senior leaders have a clear, decision-oriented view of performance, risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.

Digital Marketing

• Set the enterprise digital marketing strategy for Shield across Consumer, HCP, and Health Systems audiences.
• Direct the evolution of Shield’s web ecosystem to improve awareness, education, engagement, conversion, and customer experience.
• Define the role of each digital destination and ensure clear audience journeys across patient, provider, and Health Systems experiences.
• Oversee CRM and marketing automation strategy, including segmentation, personalization, lead nurturing, provider engagement, account-based journeys, and integration with sales and customer-experience systems.
• Own paid and organic social media strategy, governance, and performance across Shield audiences.
• Partner with Customer Experience, Product, Commercial Operations, and Sales to create connected digital experiences across the pre-test, ordering, fulfillment, and post-result journey.
• Establish digital experience standards covering accessibility, search, usability, content governance, analytics, privacy, and regulatory compliance.

Technology, Data, and AI Leadership

• Define the future-state marketing technology and digital capability roadmap required to support Shield’s growth.
• Oversee digital agencies and technology partners to ensure platform performance, integration, privacy, security, compliance, scalability, and value.
• Partner with Analytics, IT, Privacy, Legal, and Commercial Operations to strengthen audience data, identity resolution, measurement, and activation capabilities.
• Champion responsible uses of AI in marketing to improve audience targeting, personalization, content delivery, campaign optimization, forecasting, and operational efficiency.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and platforms, distinguishing meaningful business opportunities from low-value experimentation.

Senior Leadership and Cross-Functional Influence

• Serve as a senior leader within the Screening Marketing organization, contributing to portfolio strategy, annual planning, operating priorities, organizational design, and resource allocation.
• Act as the connective leader across Consumer, HCP, Health Systems, Brand, Analytics, Customer Experience, Sales, Medical, Managed Care, Public Affairs, Regulatory, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Communications.
• Provide senior-level counsel to marketing and commercial leadership on audience strategy, media investment, digital transformation, and performance.
• Lead through influence across a matrixed organization, resolving competing priorities and driving decisions across functions.
• Represent Performance and Digital Marketing in senior leadership reviews, annual planning discussions, agency governance, and strategic business forums.

Team and Organizational Leadership

• Build, lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team spanning digital marketing, paid media, performance marketing, social media, and related capabilities.
• Establish clear roles, decision rights, operating processes, and performance expectations across internal teams, agencies, and cross-functional partners.
• Strengthen the organization’s long-term media, digital, analytical, and leadership capabilities.
• Foster a culture of strategic thinking, experimentation, accountability, collaboration, speed, and continuous improvement.
• Manage organizational capacity and determine the appropriate balance of internal talent, agencies, contractors, and technology partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, Analytics, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.

• 15+ years of progressive experience in media, performance marketing, digital marketing, or integrated marketing, including significant leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated success managing significant multi-million-dollar media budgets or advertising portfolios with accountability for strategy, allocation, optimization, and performance.
• Experience leading complex national or multi-channel media programs across brand and performance objectives.
• Deep expertise across television, streaming, programmatic, search, social, endemic HCP media, account-based marketing, CRM, web, SEO, conversion optimization, and marketing automation.
• Proven ability to build integrated strategies across brand building, demand generation, customer engagement, and commercial activation.
• Strong agency leadership experience, including agency selection, contract and scope management, governance, and performance accountability.
• Advanced understanding of media measurement, attribution, experimentation, audience strategy, and marketing analytics.
• Experience defining or advancing marketing technology, customer data, personalization, and AI-enabled marketing capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to influence executives and lead across a complex, highly matrixed organization.
• Experience building and developing high-performing teams and leading through organizational growth and change.
• Healthcare, diagnostics, medical device, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or other regulated-industry experience strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of FDA, FTC, HIPAA, privacy, promotional-review, and healthcare-marketing requirements.
• Strong executive communication, judgment, and decision-making skills.
• Ability to operate with urgency, resilience, and discipline in a rapidly evolving commercial environment.

AI & Digital Fluency

• Demonstrate curiosity, sound judgment, and the ability to critically evaluate and responsibly leverage AI-enabled tools in accordance with company policies, ethical standards, and regulatory requirements to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of work.

Hybrid Work Model: This section is applicable to onsite employees who are eligible for hybrid work location as specified by management and related policies.  Guardant has defined days for in-person/onsite collaboration and work-from-home days for individual-focused time. All U.S. employees who live within 50 miles of a Guardant facility will be required to be onsite on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We have found aligning our scheduled in-office days allows our teams to do the best work and creates the focused thinking time our innovative work requires. At Guardant, our work model has created flexibility for better work-life balance while keeping teams connected to advance our science for our patients. 

The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. This range does not include benefits or, if applicable, bonus, commission, or equity. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, education, job-related skills, job duties, and business need. Primary Location: Palo Alto, CA Primary Location Base Pay Range: $194,800 - $267,850 Other US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $165,580 - $227,673 If the role is performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is: $175,320 - $241,065