Growth Engineer for Niche Directory Portfolio - Scrapers, Programmatic SEO, AI Outreach

⚠️ READ FIRST: Do not contact me outside Upwork. No emails, LinkedIn messages, WhatsApp, or Telegram. Any off-platform contact attempt is an instant disqualification. I get spammed daily and will not respond. -- About us -- We're a UK boutique technology consultancy running a growing portfolio of niche directory and content sites (seasonal events, car services, and more coming). We're looking for a Head of Growth to own traffic across the portfolio. Starting with one paid trial project. If it works, this becomes an ongoing retainer or full-time role. -- What we need -- Someone genuinely self-sufficient. You don't need hand-holding, briefs, or daily check-ins. You see a site, identify the traffic opportunity, build the plan, execute it, and report results. We provide the sites and the brief. You bring the strategy and the hands. This is not a pure SEO role. We want someone fluent across: - Programmatic SEO and content at scale (AI-assisted, human-quality) - Web scraping (Python, Playwright, Apify, or similar) to build datasets and lead lists - Cold outreach (Clay, Instantly, Smartlead, Apollo) for partnerships, backlinks, and B2B leads - Technical SEO basics (schema, internal linking, page speed, Core Web Vitals) - AI tooling end-to-end (Claude, GPT, n8n, Make, custom scripts) - Light frontend work to ship landing pages or test variants (HTML/CSS, basic JS, ideally Astro - although claude can do this for you) -- The trial project -- We'll likely scope a specific 2 to 4 week paid project on one of our sites. You'll: - Audit the current state and traffic opportunity - Propose a plan with clear KPIs (traffic, leads, partnerships) - Build the scrapers, content systems, and outreach sequences needed - Execute and report weekly -- Who we're looking for -- - Top Rated or Expert-Vetted on Upwork preferred - Proven case studies of sites you've grown (real domains, real traffic data, real outreach campaigns) - Technical enough to write your own code, not just brief a developer - Heavy daily user of AI tools, not someone who's just heard of ChatGPT - Fluent written English - Comfortable working independently with minimal direction - Can show example scrapers, outreach sequences, or content systems you've built -- Who we're not looking for -- - Agencies pitching as individuals - Pure SEO consultants who only do audits and recommendations - Anyone who needs detailed daily briefs - Generic "marketing experts" - Anyone who can't show actual work