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The Role: Digital Measurement & Tagging Specialist

Employment: Freelance

Location: Must be eligible to work in the USA and located in one of the following states: TN, GA, AL, FL, NC, SC, NV, NH, TX, MN, VA, IL

The Facts

Johnson Group helps brands slay the giants that stand in the way of their success by blending fresh ideas with proprietary direct response tools to forge deeper brand connections and more profitable conversions. We provide full-funnel marketing and advertising from brand positioning, research, data science and full-stack development to video/photo content, media, strategy and creative.

The Gist

If you are looking for a team instead of a holding company and you dream about the perfect blend of collaboration and autonomy, keep reading.

Johnson Group is a place where every person is truly a part of building what the future of the agency looks like. Everyone is empowered to Dig for Big. This means we are looking for big skills, big outside-the-box thinking and big passion for mastering the technical details that drive client success.

The Summary

We are looking for a highly technical, detail-obsessed Digital Measurement & Tagging Specialist to own the implementation and reliability of digital measurement across our clients’ websites and marketing ecosystems.

This is not primarily a reporting or Conversion Rate Optimization role. This person will own the measurement infrastructure underneath those disciplines, ensuring that user behavior, conversions, advertising signals and consent states are captured accurately, securely and consistently.

The ideal candidate has deep hands‑on experience with Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4 and server‑side Google Tag Manager, along with a strong understanding of modern first‑party measurement architecture, Consent Mode, privacy‑driven browser restrictions, advertising conversion APIs and dataLayer design.

You should be equally comfortable architecting a measurement plan, debugging JavaScript in the browser, configuring a server‑side GTM container, troubleshooting consent behavior, validating advertising conversions and explaining to a marketing team why two platforms may report different numbers.

This role will work closely with Johnson Group’s Development, CRO, SEO/GEO, Paid Media, Data & Analytics and Account teams to build measurement systems our clients can trust.

The ResponsibilitiesGoogle Tag Manager & Measurement Architecture

Own the design, implementation and ongoing governance of Google Tag Manager environments across multiple client accounts.

Responsibilities include:

• Architect and maintain web Google Tag Manager containers.
• Establish scalable GTM naming conventions, folders, variables, triggers, templates and governance standards.
• Design and implement structured dataLayer
• Translate marketing and business requirements into technical tracking specifications.
• Build custom events, parameters, variables and conversion tracking.
• Implement ecommerce measurement, including GA4 recommended ecommerce events where applicable.
• Configure cross‑domain and multi‑domain tracking.
• Troubleshoot duplicate events, missing events, attribution problems and tag sequencing issues.
• Review existing GTM implementations and identify architectural, performance and data‑quality problems.
• Manage GTM environments, versions, publishing processes and documentation.
• Work with developers to implement dataLayer pushes and other website‑level measurement requirements.

Server‑Side Google Tag Manager

Design, deploy and maintain server‑side Google Tag Manager (sGTM) implementations for agency clients.

The Specialist should understand not simply how to configure a server container, but how the browser, client‑side GTM, server container, first‑party endpoint and downstream marketing platforms interact.

Responsibilities include:

• Deploy and configure server‑side GTM containers.
• Configure custom first‑party tagging domains.
• Implement first‑party measurement endpoints.
• Configure GA4 traffic through server‑side GTM.
• Configure Google Ads tracking through server‑side GTM.
• Implement and troubleshoot Meta Conversions API integrations where appropriate.
• Configure server‑side event transformation and enrichment.
• Control which event data and parameters are forwarded to marketing platforms.
• Understand server‑side clients, tags, transformations and request handling.
• Troubleshoot browser‑to‑server and server‑to‑platform communication.
• Monitor server‑container health and data integrity.
• Understand infrastructure and hosting considerations for sGTM deployments.
• Work with DNS, CDN and development teams when first‑party routing or domain configuration is required.
• Maintain familiarity with Google Cloud, Cloud Run and managed sGTM hosting providers.

Experience with same‑origin or first‑party routing architectures, reverse proxy configurations and CDN platforms such as Cloudflare is highly valuable.

Google Tag Gateway & First‑Party Measurement

Implement and maintain Google Tag Gateway and other first‑party measurement configurations designed to improve the reliability and durability of Google measurement.

Responsibilities include:

• Configure Google Tag Gateway for appropriate clients.
• Coordinate DNS, CDN and website configuration requirements.
• Validate first‑party routing and tag delivery.
• Troubleshoot routing, caching, proxy and domain issues.
• Understand the relationship between Google Tag Gateway, GTM, GA4, Google Ads and server‑side tagging.
• Evaluate when Tag Gateway, sGTM or a combination of approaches is appropriate for a client’s measurement architecture.
• Monitor developments in browser privacy restrictions and Google’s first‑party measurement technologies.

Consent Management & Privacy‑Aware Measurement

Own the technical implementation of consent‑aware measurement.

The Specialist will work from privacy and consent requirements established by clients, legal teams and approved organizational policies and translate those requirements into working technical implementations.

Responsibilities include:

• Implement and validate Google Consent Mode.
• Configure default and updated consent states.
• Configure regional consent behavior when required.
• Implement consent‑aware tag firing.
• Ensure GTM and marketing tags correctly respond to consent signals.
• Integrate GTM with Consent Management Platforms.
• Troubleshoot tags firing before consent or failing to fire after consent.
• Validate consent behavior across browsers, devices and geographic scenarios.
• Understand cookieless pings and consent‑aware Google measurement behavior.
• Document consent configurations and dependencies.

Experience with CMP platforms such as OneTrust, Cookiebot, Usercentrics, Didomi or similar platforms is strongly preferred.

The Specialist should understand the technical implications of GDPR, CCPA/CPRA and other privacy frameworks but will not be expected to provide legal advice.

GA4 Implementation & Governance

Own the technical implementation layer of Google Analytics 4.

Responsibilities include:

• Configure GA4 properties and web data streams.
• Implement GA4 events and parameters.
• Configure key events/conversions.
• Configure custom dimensions and metrics.
• Implement user properties where appropriate.
• Configure referral exclusions and cross‑domain measurement.
• Troubleshoot session, source/medium and attribution anomalies.
• Audit existing GA4 implementations for data‑quality problems.
• Maintain consistent event‑taxonomy standards across client implementations.
• Validate GA4 data against source events and downstream platforms.
• Support BigQuery exports and analytics teams when deeper event‑level analysis is required.

This role is responsible for ensuring the data entering GA4 is trustworthy. Analysis and optimization of that data may be performed by CRO, Analytics, Media and Strategy teams.

Advertising Conversion Tracking

Own or support the technical implementation of advertising‑platform measurement.

Platforms may include:

• Google Ads
• Meta
• Microsoft Advertising
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Other advertising and marketing platforms as required

Responsibilities include:

• Configure primary and secondary conversion actions.
• Implement Google Ads conversion tracking.
• Implement Enhanced Conversions.
• Implement Meta Pixel and Conversions API.
• Implement Microsoft UET and other advertising tags.
• Validate event IDs and deduplication between browser and server events.
• Troubleshoot attribution and conversion discrepancies.
• Ensure conversion signals contain the appropriate parameters and identifiers.
• Work with paid media teams to determine which business actions should be optimized as platform conversions.

Data Quality, QA & Debugging

Measurement accuracy is a core responsibility of this position.

The Specialist must be comfortable investigating complex problems where multiple systems disagree.

Responsibilities include:

• Use GTM Preview/Tag Assistant extensively.
• Use GA4 DebugView.
• Use browser developer tools and network requests to inspect tracking behavior.
• Inspect cookies, local storage, request payloads, headers and query parameters.
• Debug JavaScript tracking implementations.
• Validate server‑side requests and responses.
• Use Meta Events Manager and other platform diagnostic tools.
• Test across browsers and devices.
• Identify duplicate, missing or malformed events.
• Validate UTM and click‑identifier persistence.
• Investigate discrepancies between GA4, Google Ads, Meta and backend systems.
• Maintain QA checklists for new implementations and website launches.
• Perform measurement audits before and after major website releases.

The successful candidate should be naturally skeptical of tracking implementations until the data has been validated.

JavaScript & Web Technology

Strong working knowledge of front‑end web technologies is required.

The Specialist should be comfortable with:

• JavaScript
• HTML
• CSS fundamentals
• DOM events
• Browser APIs
• Cookies
• Local storage
• HTTP requests
• Query parameters
• JSON
• APIs
• Regular expressions

You do not need to be a full‑stack software engineer, but you must be capable of independently reading, writing and debugging JavaScript used in measurement implementations.

Experience working with developers in platforms such as WordPress, Shopify and custom web applications is preferred.

Measurement Planning & Documentation

Create technical measurement documentation that makes complex implementations understandable and maintainable.

Responsibilities include:

• Measurement plans
• Event dictionaries
• Event and parameter specifications
• dataLayer documentation
• Conversion maps
• GTM architecture documentation
• Consent architecture documentation
• Implementation QA reports
• Tagging audits
• Change logs
• Client‑specific implementation standards

Documentation should allow another technically capable team member to understand how and why an implementation works without reverse‑engineering it from GTM.

Agency & Client Collaboration

This role will operate across multiple client accounts simultaneously.

The Specialist will collaborate closely with:

• Development
• CRO
• SEO/GEO
• Paid Media
• Data & Analytics
• UI/UX
• Account Directors
• Client technology and marketing teams

The Specialist should be capable of translating technical measurement issues into clear explanations for nontechnical stakeholders.

For example:

Marketing requirement:
“We need Google Ads to optimize toward completed appointments.”

Measurement responsibility:
Determine where that event occurs, how it enters the dataLayer, what identifiers and parameters are available, how consent affects collection, whether browser and server events are required, how deduplication works and how the conversion is validated in Google Ads.

Measurement Strategy & Innovation

The digital measurement ecosystem is changing rapidly.

This person will be expected to stay current on:

• Server‑side tagging
• Google Tag Gateway
• Browser privacy changes
• Intelligent Tracking Prevention
• First‑party measurement strategies
• Consent Mode
• Enhanced Conversions
• Conversion APIs
• First‑party identifiers
• Advertising platform measurement changes
• Chrome Privacy Sandbox developments
• GA4 measurement changes
• Marketing data pipelines
• AI‑assisted implementation, QA and debugging

The Specialist should proactively evaluate new technologies and recommend when Johnson Group should incorporate them into our client measurement standards.

Platform & Tool ExpertiseGoogle Tag Manager — Required

Deep hands‑on expertise with:

• Tags
• Triggers
• Variables
• Custom templates
• Custom JavaScript
• dataLayer
• Environments
• Consent settings
• Debugging
• Container governance

Server‑Side Google Tag Manager — Required

Hands‑on experience implementing and maintaining production server‑side GTM environments.

Google Analytics 4 — Required

Deep implementation knowledge of:

• Events
• Param