Growth Marketing Lead

Growth Marketing Lead

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Growth Marketing Lead based in the United States.

We are looking for a hands-on Growth Marketing Lead to take full ownership of the marketing strategy and growth performance of a flagship AI competition platform. In this role, you will lead the entire participant journey, from initial discovery and registration to activation, engagement, and long-term retention. You will develop and execute data-driven growth strategies, experiment with acquisition channels, and identify opportunities to expand a global community of AI researchers, security specialists, and technology enthusiasts. Working closely with product, research, and partnership teams, you will turn each new challenge launch into an opportunity to test strategies and accelerate growth. This position combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, offering significant autonomy to shape marketing priorities, manage budgets, and drive measurable results. You will play a key role in expanding participation in initiatives that contribute to the advancement of AI safety and security.

Accountabilities

As Growth Marketing Lead, you will own the end-to-end growth strategy, optimize the participant acquisition funnel, and develop scalable marketing initiatives to increase engagement and retention. Your responsibilities will include:

• Own the participant growth funnel: Map, measure, and optimize the entire participant journey, from first website visit and registration to first challenge participation, repeat engagement, and high-performance participation.
• Identify conversion bottlenecks and collaborate with product teams to improve onboarding, landing pages, email communications, and in-product engagement.
• Own acquisition, activation, engagement, and retention metrics, developing dashboards and reporting systems to monitor performance.
• Drive growth experiments: Treat each challenge launch as an opportunity to test new audiences, messaging, channels, and campaign strategies with clearly defined hypotheses and success metrics.
• Experiment across paid social media, creator and influencer partnerships, technical communities, events, strategic partnerships, and owned marketing channels.
• Analyze campaign performance, optimize budget allocation, scale successful initiatives, and discontinue underperforming activities.
• Develop new acquisition channels: Establish new growth channels from the ground up, including tracking infrastructure, initial experiments, performance evaluation, and scaling strategies.
• Build and manage creator, influencer, and partner programs, ensuring measurable return on investment.
• Collaborate with AI research partners and internal teams to maximize visibility and participation for each challenge.
• Segment and target audiences: Identify and prioritize key audience groups, including security researchers, AI and machine learning engineers, prompt engineers, students, and technology enthusiasts.
• Develop tailored campaigns, messaging, and offers for different audience segments based on their interests, behaviors, and conversion potential.
• Use behavioral insights to re-engage inactive participants and identify opportunities to develop high-performing community members.
• Improve engagement and retention: Design and manage lifecycle marketing programs across email, Discord, and in-product communications to encourage repeat participation.
• Transform community activity and challenge outcomes into engaging content that strengthens credibility and attracts new participants.
• Share customer and community insights with product teams to inform future product improvements and challenge design.
• Establish clear growth priorities and deliver measurable results through regular performance reviews and experimentation.

First 90-day objectives:

• Map the existing participant funnel and identify the three most significant growth opportunities.
• Audit current acquisition channels and marketing expenditure, reallocating or eliminating underperforming investments.
• Conduct growth experiments across at least two challenge launches and present actionable findings.
• Launch at least one new participant acquisition channel.
• Establish weekly reporting covering registrations, activation, repeat participation, and cost per successful break.
• Deliver measurable growth in qualified challenge participation.

Requirements

The ideal candidate is an experienced growth marketer with a strong product-led mindset, analytical capabilities, and a proven ability to scale user acquisition through experimentation. You should bring:

• At least 6 years of experience in growth marketing or performance marketing, including experience within a product-led growth (PLG) or consumer-focused startup.
• A demonstrated track record of growing user bases through structured experimentation, supported by measurable results and specific performance metrics.
• Strong understanding of marketing funnels and conversion optimization, with the ability to identify friction points, develop hypotheses, implement improvements, and measure outcomes.
• Excellent analytical skills and the ability to independently build dashboards, interpret data, and generate actionable insights without relying entirely on a dedicated data team.
• Experience launching, managing, and scaling multiple acquisition channels while allocating marketing budgets according to return on investment.
• Proven ability to segment audiences and develop targeted campaigns that address different user needs and behaviors.
• Strong execution and prioritization skills, with the ability to move quickly, manage competing initiatives, and discontinue activities that do not deliver results.
• Ability to work independently and operate as the most senior marketing professional responsible for a product's growth strategy and performance.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work effectively with product, research, partnerships, and other cross-functional teams.

Additional assets that would strengthen your application:

• Experience marketing to technical audiences, particularly developers, security researchers, and engineering professionals.
• Previous involvement in competitions, hackathons, bug bounty programs, or other community-driven initiatives.
• Experience building and growing Discord communities or similar online communities.
• Familiarity with artificial intelligence, AI safety, or cybersecurity.
• Hands-on experience with conversion rate optimization (CRO), lifecycle marketing, email automation platforms, or product analytics tools.

Benefits

• Annual base salary ranging from $175,000 to $220,000, depending on experience and qualifications.
• Competitive equity package, offering ownership opportunities in a growing startup with established revenue and globally recognized customers.
• 401(k) retirement plan with up to 4% employer matching.
• 28 days of annual leave, including vacation days and holidays.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage.
• Flexible working arrangements.
• Catered lunches for employees working from the Pittsburgh office.
• Visa sponsorship opportunities for exceptional candidates.
• Opportunity to lead growth marketing for an innovative AI-focused product and contribute to the advancement of AI safety and security.