Social Media Lead

Emerge Career

We're hiring our first AI-forward social media to build our social channels. If you're obsessed with performance, love end-to-end ownership, and want to build an acquisition engine for a mission that changes lives, you'll thrive here.

Who You Are

1. You understand that content is distribution, and that for our audience that means social first . We capture some of the most powerful real stories in workforce development, and most of them never get told well. You change that. You can take a raw graduation clip or a five-minute student interview and cut three things from it: a hook for TikTok and Reels, a written story for SEO and AEO, and a referral asset alumni actually want to share. You measure content like a growth channel, not a brand exercise: reach, watch time, and how many of those views turn into an enrollment. And you've proven you can do it: you've personally grown an account to millions of views and 10K+ followers, and you can point to the content strategy that got it there.
2. You believe everyone deserves a second chance . This isn't a cause you discovered in the job description. You've thought deeply about poverty, incarceration, and opportunity—and you want your work to matter. You understand that behind every campaign metric is a real person trying to change their life. That weight drives you, not burdens you.
3. You have a genuine point of view on social marketing . You know what works, what's overrated, and what most teams get wrong. You don't default to best practices when your instincts say otherwise. You have opinions on creative, on channels, on messaging—and you're willing to defend them with data. Safe, hedge-everything marketing bores you.
4. You are AI-native, not AI-curious . You've built real workflows that compress hours into minutes—automated creative testing pipelines, AI-assisted email systems, reporting dashboards that update themselves. You think like an orchestrator: breaking work into discrete tasks, routing each to the right agent, and stitching outputs together into something production-ready. You maintain your own repo of AI skills and workflows—version-controlled, documented, and shared with teammates—and you help others build their own so the whole organization compounds. If you're still at the stage of typing questions into a chat interface or don't know how to set up an MCP connection, this role isn't for you. The gap between a marketer who builds these systems and one who doesn't is now measured in 10x output, not 10% efficiency.
5. You are data-driven and creatively rigorous . You don't guess about what's working—you measure it. You obsess over attribution: you want to know not just how many students enrolled, but which channel, which creative, which touchpoint drove the decision. But you also know that data tells you what happened, not why, and that the best creative insights come from human judgment. You hold both things at once.
6. You are entrepreneurial . You're scrappy, autonomous, and low-maintenance. You don't wait for permission or perfect conditions. You run tests, see what works, kill what doesn't, and ship again. You're comfortable being the primary person accountable for acquisition—and you find that energizing, not scary. You roll up your sleeves and solve problems. No job is too small.
7. You play to win . You stay optimistic when things are slow, keep moving when campaigns underperform, and don't catastrophize when a test fails. You're not rattled by ambiguity. You bring a "yes, and" mindset that finds a path forward instead of reasons to slow down.
8. You work hard . You show up early, stay late, and do what needs to get done—no ego, no excuses. This isn't a 9-to-5. The average person at Emerge works 60+ hours/week because we care about the mission. If that sounds miserable, this isn't for you. If it sounds exciting, you'll fit right in.
9. You are a straight shooter . You don't hide bad news or dress up underperforming metrics. You bring clarity, honesty, and accountability to every interaction—internally and externally.
10. You are a clear writer . You don't need to write the next great novel, but you must communicate simply and precisely. Great copy is a superpower in this role. You value brevity and clarity over length and jargon. You understand that in marketing, every word either earns attention or loses it.

Candidate Profiles We're Excited About

• The right hand who's ready to lead . You learned the ropes working for an exceptional social marketer—maybe at a high-growth startup or a scaled tech company—and now you're ready to go do your boss's job. You were the second-in-command who actually ran the campaigns, built the dashboards, and made the calls. Now you want full ownership.
• The agency convert . You spent formative years at an agency—maybe as a strategist, media buyer, or account lead—working across multiple clients, industries, and briefs. You moved into tech because you wanted to own outcomes, not just deliverables. You're versatile, fast, and know how to produce high-quality creative under pressure.
• The big tech marketer ready for a real challenge . You started at a company like Google, Meta, or Square, where you learned social marketing fundamentals and how to work cross-functionally. But you didn't stay—because you wanted to get your hands dirty at a smaller company where your work has direct, measurable impact. You've been a first or second marketing hire before, and you're ready to do it again for a mission that matters.

Requirements

• Willing to relocate and work in-person in New York City
• Passionate about working with underrepresented communities and tackling challenges related to poverty and inequity
• 3+ years of hands-on growth marketing experience with deep expertise in at least one core channel (paid search, SEO, or channel/field marketing)
• Proven track record of owning campaigns end-to-end—strategy, creative, execution, and analysis—not just managing agencies or writing copy while someone else ran the campaign
• Demonstrated ability to build AI-powered marketing workflows—not just using AI tools, but building automated systems that meaningfully changed how you operate (we'll ask you to walk us through specific examples)
• Experience taking a project from 0 to 1: you've been a founder, first marketing hire, or built something impressive on your own
• Strong analytical ability—you're comfortable building attribution models and turning metrics into decisions
• You've personally grown a social account to at least 10K+ followers, turned it into an acquisition engine, and you can walk us through exactly how you did it.

Bonus Points

• Experience building channel partnerships with companies that serve the same demographic—think fintechs like Chime or Cash App, benefits platforms, or other products that low-income adults already use and trust. You see these as co-marketing and distribution channels, not just brand plays.
• Experience marketing to low-income, non-traditional, or underserved audiences
• Experience in ed-tech, workforce development, or social impact organizations
• Experience with out-of-home advertising, field marketing, or community-based outreach
• You've built custom AI tooling for marketing workflows—automated creative pipelines, AI-assisted email systems, reporting agents, prompt libraries
• Experience in a high-growth startup environment (sub-20 people)

What You Will Be Doing

• Doubling down on what's already working . 57% of our students come through internet search or social media. You'll figure out exactly where within that 57% the highest ROI lives—which search queries, which platforms, which creative formats—and aggressively scale what's working. You'll build the attribution infrastructure to know what's actually driving enrollment, not just clicks.
• Building AI-powered marketing systems . The highest-leverage thing you can do in this role is automate the repetitive. You'll identify the