“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker, 1890s. He needed a Digital Marketing Manager with a proper attribution model. So do you.
Your paid media is up, your CRM is a graveyard of unsent campaigns, and the person running it all is a coordinator who was promised a manager would be hired “soon.” It’s been a year.
Finding a genuine Digital Marketing Manager in Sydney, one who can run performance, lifecycle and content and still read a dashboard without flinching, has become oddly difficult. The great ones aren’t on SEEK. They’re at the company whose emails you actually open, and they’re not answering InMails.
This isn’t a job advert. It’s Big Wave Digital telling Sydney that we have capacity right now to run a Digital Marketing Manager search, and we’d like yours to be the one that takes the slot.
Yes, we have capacity. For a moment
We are a two person agency. Keiran Hathorn and Jules Semmens. No pods, no juniors, no “client partner” who hands your brief to someone you’ll never meet. A slot has just opened on the marketing side of the desk, which is where Big Wave Digital started in 2010 and where we’ve placed more people than anywhere else.
Our ideal candidate, mid campaign review. Calm, Australian, slightly suspicious of vanity metrics.
What we know about marketing hires in Sydney
Big Wave Digital was built as a digital marketing recruitment agency first. Technology and AI came after. Sixteen years of placing performance marketers, CRM and lifecycle specialists, content leads, growth managers and marketing directors across Sydney’s agencies, SaaS companies, retailers and not for profits means we know the market in an uncomfortable amount of detail. Keiran has been recruiting here since 1998, so he’s seen search go from Overture to Google, email go from blast to lifecycle, and “content” go from a blog to a full production studio.
On the first call, before any paperwork, we’ll tell you:
- What a Digital Marketing Manager with real performance, CRM and content ownership is earning in Sydney this quarter, by company size.
- Whether you actually need a Digital Marketing Manager, a Growth Lead, a Performance Marketing Manager or a Head of Marketing, because the title changes who applies and what you pay by about forty thousand dollars.
- Which agencies and brands in Sydney have just restructured, which means strong marketers are suddenly taking calls.
- Why your ad is drawing coordinators with a big title and not the manager who’s run a seven figure budget, and how to fix it.
The two people on your search
Keiran Hathorn founded Big Wave Digital in 2010 and has close to 30 years in recruitment. Before recruitment, technical support. Before that, a croupier in the high rollers room at Sydney’s casino, which taught him to read a table and, later, to read a candidate who says they “owned the strategy” when they owned the spreadsheet. He takes your brief himself, interviews everyone himself, and tells you early if your budget and your brief need a mediator.
Jules Semmens runs the parallel search. While Keiran interviews, Jules is mapping the market, re-approaching the people who haven’t replied and making sure nothing sits still. Two people, one role, no handoffs.
Launching a campaign without a Digital Marketing Manager. It looks great right up until the landing.
Awards, since you’ll ask
We don’t usually lead with these, but you’re choosing who to trust with a hire:
- SEEK SARA Award, Best Small Recruitment Agency (Technology), Winner
- SEEK SARA Award, Best Small Recruitment Agency (Technology), Runner Up, twice
- AIMIA Awards, Best Business Website, Finalist
- Recruitment International, Best Recruitment Company to Work For, Finalist
- JobAdvisor Top 10 Coolest SME Companies to Work For
- 2026 Randwick City Business Excellence Awards, Finalist
The number we’re prouder of is 89 percent. That’s our repeat client rate. Marketers understand retention. So do we.
Why us
Because the big agencies will post your role, forward the applicants and call it a search. Because a Digital Marketing Manager who can’t explain a campaign that failed and what they changed is not the one you want, and we ask that question before you ever meet them. Because every candidate from us has been interviewed by Keiran or Jules, briefed honestly, and asked about comp, notice, visa and other processes up front.
We’ve placed marketing and digital people at Universal Music, Prada, World Nomads, FetchTV, ClassBento, Apparent, Spacetalk and Hoselink, as well as a long line of Sydney agencies and start ups whose first real marketing hire had to land. We still answer our own phones.
How it works
- Email or call Keiran. Twenty minutes on the channels, the budget, the team and what’s not working.
- We tell you honestly whether we can fill it, how long it’ll take and what it costs.
- Within days, a short list of three to five people who can genuinely do the job and genuinely want to do it for you.
- We manage interviews, feedback, the offer and the counter offer. You get a Digital Marketing Manager. Your coordinator gets to go home on time.
Take the slot
Hiring a Digital Marketing Manager in Sydney, or about to? Email keiran@bigwavedigital.com.au, call +61 2 9380 4431, or connect with us here.
Tell us the channels, the budget and the gap. We’ll tell you who we’d call first.
Big Wave Digital. Sydney’s specialist digital marketing, technology and AI recruiters since 2010. Marketing search slot open now.
