Director of Media Strategy & Activation (Paid Media)

DocSend
DocSend

Marketing & Communications

United States

USD 182,900-278,400 / year + Equity

Posted on Aug 11, 2026

Dropbox is a Virtual First company. For this role, we are hiring in Zones 2 and 3. Please refer to our Compensation section below to see what neighborhoods fall under each Zone.

Role Description

Dropbox is looking for a Director of Media to own our total media investment—performance and brand—under a single leader.

This leader will build a unified media strategy that brings performance marketing and brand investments together into one investment thesis and one operating model. They will own the media portfolio end-to-end, from upper-funnel brand campaigns through paid search, paid social, programmatic, mobile, and emerging channels, making investment tradeoffs as business priorities evolve.

The role also owns how the media organization operates, balancing in-house expertise, agency partnerships, and specialist support to maximize speed, quality, and impact.

The ideal candidate has worked on both sides of the industry—building media expertise at an agency before leading media inside a technology or high-growth company. They understand what great agency partnerships look like while also knowing how to build world-class internal capabilities.

This role sits at the center of Dropbox's growth strategy, connecting brand, performance marketing, Product Growth, Sales, and Marketing Data Science to drive measurable business outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Unified Media Strategy. Build and own Dropbox's media strategy across brand and performance. Set the annual and quarterly investment thesis, define the channel portfolio, and make the tradeoff decisions on where spend moves and why.

  • Total Budget Ownership. Manage Dropbox's full media investment across paid search, paid social, programmatic, display, video, mobile, affiliate, and brand channels. Own planning, forecasting, pacing, and in-quarter reallocation against efficiency and growth targets.

  • Brand and Performance Integration. Align reach, frequency, creative strategy, and channel mix so brand and performance investment reinforce each other rather than compete. Partner closely with the Brand organization, which owns brand positioning and creative direction, to translate brand strategy into media execution.

  • Operating Model and Partnerships. Design and run the right mix of in-house capability and agency partnership. Own agency relationships, and build the internal muscle where needed.

  • AI-Enabled Media Operations. Develop and execute a point of view on where agentic and AI-enabled workflows belong in the media stack — creative production and testing velocity, audience modeling, budget allocation, bid strategy, reporting, and quality control. Make deliberate decisions about where machine judgment outperforms human judgment, and where it does not.

  • Connect Media to Revenue. Partner with Product Growth, Sales, and Marketing Data Science to connect media signals to downstream outcomes — activation, conversion, product-qualified leads, expansion, and retention. Build the acquisition layer of a unified self-serve and sales-assisted revenue system.

  • Measurement Rigor. Partner with Marketing Data Science on attribution, incrementality testing, and media mix modeling. Be a sophisticated consumer and challenger of measurement methodology, and translate complex performance tradeoffs into crisp, executive-ready recommendations.

  • Team Leadership. Lead and grow a team of channel and brand media leaders. Build clarity on what each person owns, how they are measured, and how their work ladders to revenue.

Requirements

  • 10+ years in media, performance marketing, or digital marketing with increasing scope and leadership responsibility, at a high-growth B2B and/or B2C company
  • 4+ years leading teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and org design
  • Deep, hands-on expertise across paid channels — search, paid social, programmatic, display, video, mobile — including planning, forecasting, budget pacing, audience design, and performance management
  • Experience owning brand media alongside performance media, with working knowledge of brand lift measurement, reach and frequency planning, and creative performance optimization
  • Track record managing significant media budgets with clear, demonstrated impact on acquisition efficiency, pipeline, or revenue
  • Experience managing agency and vendor ecosystems — scoping, selecting, and holding partners accountable — and building in-house capability where it creates advantage
  • Strong analytical fluency: attribution approaches, incrementality testing, MMM/MTA concepts, and unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback)
  • Experience marketing across self-serve, product-led, and sales-assisted motions, and adapting programs across consumer, SMB, and mid-market segments
  • Excellent executive communication: you can turn a complicated performance picture into a clear recommendation and defend it

Preferred Qualifications

  • Agency and in-house background. You built your craft agency-side and then brought that capability in-house at a technology or high-growth company. You have operated on both sides of the partnership.

  • AI and agentic media workflows. Demonstrated use of AI-enabled workflows in a media context — creative generation and testing, audience modeling, automated reporting, budget or bid optimization — with a clear view of where these tools create leverage and where they introduce risk. Candidates with less conventional experience will be strongly considered if they spike here.

  • Experience building a media strategy or media planning function

  • Familiarity with modern martech and adtech stacks: CDPs, marketing automation, attribution platforms, tagging and data governance

  • Experience navigating measurement disruption — privacy changes, cookie deprecation, first-party data strategy

  • Multi-product portfolio experience, including cross-sell and attach motions

  • International or EMEA media experience

Durable Skills

AI fluency means using these tools to amplify human judgment, not replace it. We believe people with these skills will thrive as work and technology continue to evolve:

  • Awareness: Understand yourself and others.
  • Judgment: Evaluate information and make decisions in complex situations.
  • Adaptability: Learn, adjust, and stay effective through change.
  • Connection: Communicate, collaborate, and build trust.

To learn more about why these skills matter and what the data shows about thriving through change, read this blog post from our Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser.

Compensation

US Zone 1

This role is not available in Zone 1

US Zone 2

$205,800—$278,400 USD

US Zone 3

$182,900—$247,500 USD

The range(s) listed above is the expected annual salary/OTE (On-Target Earnings) for this role, subject to change. Please note, OTE are for sales roles only.

Salary/OTE is just one component of Dropbox’s total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Dropbox takes a number of factors into account when determining individual starting pay, including job and level they are hired into, location/metropolitan area, skillset, and peer compensation. We target most new hire offers between the minimum up to the middle of the range.

Dropbox uses the zip code of an employee’s remote work location to determine which metropolitan pay range we use. Current US Zone locations are as follows:
  • US Zone 1: San Francisco metro, New York City metro, or Seattle metro
  • US Zone 2: California (outside SF metro), Colorado, Connecticut (outside NYC metro), Delaware, Illinois (Chicago metro), Indiana (Chicago metro), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Chicago metro), New Hampshire, New Jersey (outside NYC metro), New York (outside NYC metro), Oregon, Pennsylvania (D.C. metro), Pennsylvania (outside NYC metro), Texas (Austin metro) Virginia (DC metro), Washington (outside Seattle metro), Washington DC metro, West Virginia (DC metro), Wisconsin (Chicago metro)
  • US Zone 3: All other US locations
Read more about our Benefits.

Company Description

Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for designing a more enlightened way of working. We’re a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers shaping the future of Dropbox and, in turn, the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the autonomy of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, creating space for meaningful work and lasting relationships. With a startup mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, we expect Dropbox employees to think critically, stay curious, and use modern tools, including AI, to improve how work gets done. Here, you can be who you are and grow into who you’re meant to be. You own your impact, helping make work more intuitive, joyful, and human for yourself and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you’re ready to push boundaries and challenge yourself, Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Marketing Team shows the world how Dropbox makes work better. We're storytellers and strategists, exploring new ways to connect our products with the people who need them. From product launches to campaign strategy, message positioning to digital marketing, we blend creativity with data-driven insights to build our brand and grow our impact. Working across disciplines, you will tap into your own inventiveness while collaborating with teams throughout the organization, including Product, Sales and Engineering. If you're excited about translating complex technologies into engaging narratives and shaping how the world understands and experiences Dropbox, join our Marketing team.

Virtual First

Dropbox’s Virtual First way of working is designed to help people do their best work with flexibility, autonomy, and connection. Day to day, teams work remotely with nonlinear schedules and core collaboration hours that support deep focus and individual working styles. We prioritize asynchronous communication to improve clarity, respect deep work time, and reduce unnecessary meetings. While remote work is the primary experience for our employees, we also prioritize intentional, in-person connection. We bring teams together through regular team gatherings, on-demand workspaces, and Dropbox Neighborhood events in order to strengthen team cohesion, foster creativity, and enhance momentum. Virtual First is built to provide the same access to opportunity, growth, and impact for everyone, regardless of location.

This role requires travel to offsites and various other team gatherings (approximately 5-10% of the year or 2-3 days per quarter). We provide advance notice when possible and encourage candidates to discuss any accommodation needs during the interview process.

AI Fluency

AI fluency is a core part of how we work and grow. It’s not about being an expert—it’s about using these tools thoughtfully and effectively to improve your work and support others.
We look for four key behaviors in candidates:
  • Ownership: You use AI responsibly by protecting data, applying sound judgment, and taking accountability for the quality and accuracy of your work.
  • Experimentation: You explore new AI capabilities and apply them to improve workflows within approved tools and practices.
  • Leverage: You use AI to enhance thinking, improve efficiency, and increase your impact and your team’s.
  • Learning: You stay current on emerging AI tools and trends, continuously build your skills, and share what you learn with others.
Together, these behaviors help build a workforce where technology amplifies human judgment, creativity, and impact.

Dropbox supports responsible use of AI for preparation, but misrepresentation of skills or experience is not permitted. To learn more, see our approach to AI in hiring.

Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We are a welcoming place for everyone, and we do our best to make sure all people feel supported and connected at work.