Growth, SEO & ASO

We’re looking for someone battle-tested in the shifty sand dunes of SEO and ASO to help Transit scramble to the top of the search rankings, increase conversion on those pages, and put the pedal to the train metal on our budding SEM efforts. With your mastery of the dark arts of Google Analytics and your trusty utility belt of search tactics, you’ll help beam “Transit” like a bat signal to folks looking up their bus or train in our 300+ supported cities.

Transit is known for being the lighthouse keepers of the world’s best transit data, with millions of happy users. And yet too many searches yield suggestions that leave riders disappointed. Think: ad-infested apps, stale data, interfaces so broken they make you want to defenestrate your phone.

When people use Transit, however, they’re not only able to enjoy a beautifully-crafted UX — they’re suddenly able to track transit vehicles with precision, get reliable ETAs, and feel confident about the validity of the transit information they’re seeing, thanks to crowdsourcing features, AI-powered predictions, and automatic detour detection.

Our current SEO focus is putting Transit’s in-app content onto the web. It’s a project that’s already bearing fruits, with big upswings in Transit downloads. You will take the helm and turn it into a world class operation, helping us squeeze even more juice out of those auspicious Google and app store apples.

Luckily for you, we have several trump cards to play on our keyword competitors: we have a treasure chest of transit data to put up on our webpages, a recognizable brand, and thousands of high authority backlinks.

Working with Transit’s designers, data scientists, marketers and copywriters, you’ll help us continue our surge up the Google and app store charts. You’ll break through the usual plateaus, steer away from vanity metrics, and revel in getting your hands dirty. You’ll direct our SEO and ASO initiatives, and other auxiliary growth projects that drive significant Transit downloads: like paid acquisition, and fine tuning the promotion efforts of our stable of transit agency partners.

📝 Responsibilities

• You will be our SEO maestro and all that it entails. Full site audit, managing our page improvements, handling analytics, right down to the nitty gritty of keywords, metatags, and tracking performance
• Work with Transit’s copywriters, designers, and developers to make our transit data dazzle as much on the web as it does within our mobile app
• Then, once we’ve planted those hardy vines, turn on the growth hormones: tweak tweak tweak so that we’re increasing app downloads at an ever-increasing clip
• You’ll be the face of our search projects, reporting on growth experiments and growth KPIs like downloads and conversion rates to the rest of the company (and receiving regular, company-wide claps on the back for your hard work)
• Refine our app store presence as needed, increasing our discoverability and conversion in the 20+ countries we support
• Support the Business Team with local growth campaigns where an increase in users is strategically important (like to clinch a B2B deal)
• Help our Service Delivery team leverage our transit agency partnerships for even better app promotion
• Own our budding paid acquisition efforts. There is strong proof that this is a worthwhile channel for more investment – you will take it to the next level.
• When time permits, test new growth hypotheses (with a particular focus on our European expansion markets.) If this interests you, it interests us
• Wind down experiments that offer diminishing returns, and double-down on ones that are working well, systematize those processes, make sure they’re being tracked accurately, and scale them

✅ Requirements

• You have a formidable track record of growing organic search results for competitive keywords, and increasing conversion
• Several years in a growth, analytics, SEO, or digital marketing role
• You have a bloodhound’s nose for metrics that actually drive growth: you’re able to read the tea leaves in Google Analytics to figure out what’s signal and what’s noise, and adjust the game plan accordingly
• Some HTML/JS knowledge. You can fix metatags on the fly and make the occasional pull request. What you don’t know you, you can confidently look up (or ask a dev for help)
• Strong analytical chops required. You’re deeply familiar with tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Amplitude, SEMRush, Ahrefs, App Tweak, etc.
• Spreadsheets are your friend
• You’re an operator’s operator. You’re comfortable being our SEO project manager and domain expert, but you’ll also need to build and track things yourself, test relentlessly, get into the weeds, and take ownership of things when they break without needing to be asked to
• Strong written and spoken communication skills in English, and ideally French. The vast majority of Transit’s users and partner transit agencies speak English as their primary language

💯 Nice to have

• ASO experience
• Startup veteran
• Live in Montreal or would like to
• The more languages the merrier
• You know how to navigate your city without your own car
• Data science experience? Front-end experience? Let us know!

💰 Compensation and benefits

$65,000 CAD - $105,000 CAD per year, based on experience

• Cost of living adjustments are possible for employees who are not based in Montreal
• Stock options
• Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
• 5 weeks vacation
• Four-day work week at full-time salary (yes, you read that right)
• Apple laptop and equipment
• $1,500 annual mobility allowance. STM? BIXI? Uber? E-bike? Scooter? Going car-free is free at Transit.
• A training and development budget
• Generous maternal/paternal/parental leave policy. Gotta fill out our tandem bicycles somehow!
• Flexible work hours
• Spend your days surrounded by first-rate teammates and the best view of Montreal and/or [insert exotic Zoom background]
• When you’re in the office: you’ll be in urbanist heaven, surrounded by Mile End’s urban gardens, bike paths, BIXI docks, bus stops, a metro station, and limitless restaurants… cafés… bars… concert halls… bagel boutiques…
• Communal lunch-and-learn with free food in the office each week

👨‍💻 A note on diversity

Public transit is used by overwhelmingly more women and people of colour than other modes of transportation. We try to make sure the diversity of our users is reflected in the team that serves them. Because when we include people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and identities — we end up building a better app for everyone who uses Transit.

We encourage candidates of all ages, genders, origins and orientations to apply. If you’d like to specify which pronouns you use, feel free to include that in your application email.

And if your lived experience has given you a unique perspective on all things transportation, mobility, accessibility, urbanism? Let us know, and we’ll make sure your application gets the attention it merits.

📬 How to apply

Shoot us an email at [email protected] with a CV, quick summary of who you are and why you’re interested in working at Transit. We look forward to meeting you!

PS: When you apply, let us know how you heard about the position! Whispers, grapevines, middle-of-the-night Google searches? We’re dying to know.