My main thought is that this hire should not be framed as simply “someone to run Google Ads” or “manage campaigns.” That version of the role is becoming less valuable as Google Ads, paid social, and search platforms automate more of the execution layer.
What matters more now is finding someone who can connect marketing activity to the business: understand the customer journey, improve tracking and conversion data, work with sales/CRM inputs, brief AI-powered ad systems clearly, evaluate lead quality, and translate performance into practical decisions. (and also maybe this has always been the case…)
So I would look for a T-shaped growth marketer rather than a narrow PPC specialist. They should be hands-on enough to manage campaigns and content workflows, but strategic enough to ask: are we feeding the platforms the right data, targeting the right customers, measuring the right outcomes, and learning from the results? They should also have the capacity to communicate and to work with sales and marketing team overall.
For the job ad, I would make sure it includes experience or curiosity around Google Ads, SEO/AI search, analytics, conversion tracking, landing page optimization, CRM/sales alignment, and AI-assisted marketing workflows. I would also avoid making the role too broad unless expectations are clear; one person can own coordination and day-to-day execution, but deeper specialist support may still be useful for Google Ads, AI search visibility, tracking architecture, and more technical experiments.
In short: hire someone who can own the growth system internally, not just push buttons in ad platforms. Other skills you can always buy from the outside.
And no, AI cannot replace the human in this (at least yet).