Experiential Events Manager

About Your Role

As an Experiential Events Manager at Pogo, you'll own conferences, dinners and IRL events as core growth channels. You'll run a high volume of events year-round, end-to-end, from logistics and project management to evaluating which ones are worth doing again — and bring creative, memorable activations to how Pogo shows up in person.

Specifically, you will:

• Own end-to-end logistics for our conference and event programs – venues, vendors, travel, materials, staffing, follow-up
• Build and maintain relationships with event organizers, venues, and partners
• Evaluate ROI for every event – which earned their spot, which didn't, and what to do differently next time
• Bring great taste to how Pogo shows up, at every IRL touchpoint, including event displays, dinner menus, and swag
• Design creative, experiential activations that make Pogo stand out to a niche audience of insights and research leaders – the hook, not just the booth
• Travel up to 2x a month to ensure the highest priority events run smoothly
• Partner with sales and marketing to make sure events convert
• Run guerrilla marketing experiments to cut through at the events that matter most

About You

• Likely 3–7 years of experience in conference servicing, field marketing, experiential programs, or events at a tech company or creative agency.
• Strong operations chops. You can project manage many events at once with hundreds of moving parts and not drop the ball.
• You can build a relationship with anyone – especially the people hosting events, to unlock the best slots, partnerships, and venues.
• Great taste and creative instinct. A booth, a dinner, swag, a follow-up email – you care how things look and feel, and you can invent the activation, not just execute it.
• You evaluate spend honestly. Not every event is worth it. You can tell the difference and make the call to cut what isn't working.
• You operate autonomously. You don't need someone telling you which conferences to consider or which vendors to call.
• You're up to travel up to 2x a month (primarily within the US).
• You actively use AI tools in your workflows.
• Bonus: guerrilla marketing creativity, consumer insights experience, extensive travel experience.

Why You Might Be Excited About This Opportunity

• Own one of the most visible parts of our GTM strategy. Conferences, dinners, and in-person experiences are a core growth channel for us – not a side project. You'll have real ownership over how Pogo shows up in the world.
• Run events that actually matter. We care deeply about quality over quantity. Instead of churning through generic trade shows, we focus on highly intentional experiences that create meaningful relationships and drive real business outcomes.
• Have a direct impact on revenue. You'll work closely with sales and leadership to shape how events convert into pipeline, customer relationships, and long-term partnerships – with clear visibility into what's working.
• Help define the playbook early. As one of the early members of the marketing team, you'll help shape our field marketing strategy, vendor relationships, event standards, and operating rhythms as we scale.
• Get out from behind the desk. If you enjoy being in the room where things happen – building relationships face-to-face, traveling, and creating experiences people remember – this role gives you the chance to do that regularly.

Why You Might Not Be Excited About Us

• This isn't a traditional brand marketing role. We care deeply about ROI, pipeline, and relationship-building – not just running polished events or optimizing vanity metrics. Every event is expected to drive meaningful business impact.
• This is an in-the-trenches role. You'll be on the ground at events ~2x a month and own every operational detail yourself. Creative vision doesn't replace execution here – it sits on top of it.
• The role can be operationally intense. You'll own everything end-to-end: vendor issues, logistics, travel, shipments, last-minute changes, and post-event follow-up. A lot of the work happens behind the scenes.
• We move quickly with very little structure. You won't have large agency support, endless planning cycles, or overly defined processes. We value autonomy, speed, and people who can figure things out as they go.
• Travel and context-switching are part of the job. You'll be juggling multiple events, partnerships, and experiments at once while traveling frequently.
• We expect more than 9 to 5 – raw hours make an impact at our current stage. That said, we trust each team member to create a flexible work schedule that allows them to be most productive while accommodating other priorities outside of work. We also strongly encourage time off to recharge the batteries: in addition to unlimited PTO, we've implemented a minimum 20 days vacation policy