Lead Content Architect - 12-Months FTC (Mat Cover)

Zoopla is one of the UK’s most instantly recognisable property brands. In fact, we’re known and loved by over 91% of the nation (and we’re working hard on the other 9%). Our mission is to help the nation make better home decisions - by connecting everyone to their home and giving them personalised insights to help with moving, managing or financing. Over 50 million people visit Zoopla every month to access exclusive data and information on every UK property, search over 500,000 homes for sale and rent, find the best agents and secure the latest mortgage deals.

We’re a growing, dynamic team that embraces innovation and isn’t afraid to push the boundaries. We’re only just starting our journey to redefine the digital property landscape, with much more to explore and achieve. Join us, and transform the way the nation makes home decisions.

As Lead Content Architect, you’ll drive brand perception and business impact across both our consumer and customer audiences with content personalisation at scale. For consumers (buyers, sellers, renters, homeowners), you’ll build content systems that both supercharge engagement from our 6m+ subscribed homeowner database, and accelerate the adoption of our AI-powered search experience through useful and intuitive content journeys onsite and across marketing channels alike. For customers (estate agents and housebuilders) it’s a similar opportunity: to strengthen partnerships by continuously demonstrating how Zoopla supports their business growth at every key touchpoint.

In practice, You’ll build the workflows, prompt libraries and quality controls that enable a small in-house team to deliver at scale without diluting our brand voice. You’ll also be instrumental in building Zoopla’s presence and authority in AI search and LLM responses, driving Zoopla citation in property conversations everywhere. 

This is a maternity-cover role with elevated scope: the right hire for someone who wants real ownership and visible impact in a one-year window by building something that outlasts the contract. You’ll partner closely with the entire Marketing function as we transition into a system-first, hyper-personalised model.

• Content Strategy & Operating Model: Define and own Zoopla’s content strategy across consumer and customer audiences in alignment with business OKRs. You’ll design an operating model with support from the wider Marketing function, with clear briefing standards, channel logic and feedback loops that connect content activity to commercial performance. 
• AI Content Architecture & Engine Ops: Evolve and run an AI-enabled content production system including brief, drafting, review, brand voice QA, channel adaptation and performance measurement for content delivered across site, CRM, organic social, etc - all laddering back to our hero audience propositions. Embed tooling (Contentful workflows, Amplitude-led content decisions, wider AI stack) into the team’s daily practice and partner with the Head of Digital to lift the floor of AI fluency across Marketing
• Video & Multi-Format Content: Architect how Zoopla scales video using AI-assisted workflows (script-to-screen, motion graphics, voice, dynamic cutdowns). Define the toolchain, brief format and QA process so we produce a consistent cadence of publishable video without agency resource.
• Governance, Quality & AEO: Own the AI content governance model across accuracy, brand voice compliance and legal/regulatory guardrails. Work with the SEO team and Head of Digital to drive Zoopla’s AEO strategy, fuelled by Zoopla’s research, product and data insights and ensuring all content supports citation by LLMs when consumers ask property questions. Steward the continuation of Zoopla’s expertise into the AI-era property conversation.
• Content Performance & Audience Journeys: Work with Product Design and Product Managers to own how we measure and report on content’s contribution to the business. Build the view of how content captures and converts key audiences through the onsite funnel, starting with high-intent movers and scaling to our wider homeowner audience over time.
• Brand Voice Guardianship & Messaging Framework: Be the editorial conscience of Marketing, owning what “sounds like Zoopla” in an AI-augmented world. Work hand-in-glove with other messaging-oriented teams to operationalise the framework so it lives in our prompts, briefs, editorial standards and AI outputs, not just in a document. Hold the line on tone, clarity and brand personality across every asset the function ships.

• A proven track record (6+ years) in content strategy, content marketing, editorial leadership or content operations, with at least twelve months actively building AI-powered content systems, ideally for a consumer brand operating at scale.
• Audience-led and commercially literate. You build content strategies around brand delivery, audience journeys and business KPIs, not content for content’s sake. You can read audience sentiment, onsite funnel data, and hold your own with senior stakeholders and designers and writers alike.
• A brand voice guardian and systems engineer. You bring the editorial instinct to know when AI output sounds like the brand vs. a model in brand costume but you’re also a genuine systems thinker. You don’t just write content, you design the system that produces it: workflows, prompts, governance, measurement, handoffs. 
• AI-fluent at depth, not the surface. You write structured prompts, fine-tune for brand voice, evaluate critically, chain agents for multi-step workflows, and choose tools based on use cases. Hands-on experience with Contentful (or equivalent), Amplitude (or equivalent), the AI stack (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.) in real production not just experiments.
• A natural teacher, you enable others rather than gatekeep. You recognise that you add value both by the systems and scale you operationally embed and by how well you’ve brought the team on the journey. 

At Zoopla, we embrace hybrid working but emphasise the importance of also spending time together. You’ll have the opportunity to work remotely (at home) for two days per week with Mondays and Thursdays as all-Zoopla days in the office together plus a third day in-office day of your choosing. 

Our home in Tower Bridge is a buzzing hub for collaborative and individual working, with areas to socialise and exercise - within easy reach of London Bridge, Tower Hill and Bermondsey stations. On our doorstep there are plenty of great food spots including a new indoor street food market and landscaped areas to sit by the riverside.

• Our hybrid setup means you’ll join us in the Tower Bridge office 3 days each week
• 25 days annual leave + additional leave benefits Including extra days for length of service, plus other leave perks
• Cycle to work and electric car schemes
• Free Calm App membership
• Enhanced Parental leave
• Fertility Treatment Financial Support
• Group Income Protection and private medical insurance
• Gym on-site in London
• 7.5% pension contribution by the company
• Discretionary annual bonus up to 10% of base salary