Social Media Manager

Job Description

Own social for the largest college NIL marketplace in the US.

Athletes Thread | Remote (US) | Full-time or contract to start with a path to full-time

THE ROLE IN ONE LINE

Own the social media growth strategy for an existing network of 400+ college social media accounts (one IG and X per school, the same model as Barstool), plus brand new sports verticals and a creator roster you build yourself, and grow the whole thing.

ABOUT ATHLETES THREAD

Athletes Thread is the largest college NIL licensed merchandise platform in the US. 55,000+ athletes across 400+ universities. Our social presence isn't one brand account, it's a network: school affiliate accounts, main channels for two brands (Athletes Thread and Champions Deck), and new sports verticals launching now, starting with football and basketball.

We're built on the belief that every athlete is more than a name, more than a number, and we exist to amplify their stories through creative storytelling, merchandising, and marketing. Our social strategy should feel like a sports publication that happens to sell merch.

This is not a solo role. You will have a team of 18 to help execute the strategy you create.

We're looking for someone who is obsessed with social media to come in and own our network. If you dream in hooks, love storytelling, and watch ads for new offer angles for fun, this may be the job for you.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• Our brand channels: Athletes Thread and Champions Deck on IG/X. The calendar, the voice, and the judgment to spot a sports moment and turn content around fast. These are the priority accounts, with aggressive growth goals in the first 90 days.

• The network strategy: per-platform playbooks that can be run for hundreds of school accounts on IG and X. Our growth and design teams execute daily, you set the strategy they run.

• The sports verticals: launch and scale dedicated football and basketball accounts (more sports after that), each with its own content identity and growth targets.

• The creator pipeline: find, sign, and manage the contract content creators who fuel the verticals. Sourcing, briefs, calendars, performance. You own who creates for us. Tap into our athlete and customer base to find passionate UGC creators for our brand.

• The scoreboard: growth, engagement, collab acceptance, and eventually revenue attribution. You'll know if it's working, and so will we.

YOU'RE PROBABLY ONE OF TWO PEOPLE

The network operator. You've run social for a large network of accounts, whether that was Barstool's college affiliate model, a college media network, or an agency where your mix of clients acted the same way. You know how one playbook scales across hundreds of accounts, and you've managed creators as part of the machine.

The creator-entrepreneur. You built your own audience (maybe as an athlete in the NIL era), monetized it, and know creator deals from both sides. You want a bigger platform than your own channels. Here's ours: keep your own content, take a retainer, run our network, and go full-time when it's working.

EITHER WAY, YOU BRING

• Experience managing many accounts as a network, not one brand handle

• A track record of finding and managing content creators

• Real content chops of your own. You can make what you're asking others to make.

• Numbers. What you grew, by how much, and what you did to cause it.

• Sports and NIL fluency is a big plus. College sports culture even more so.

NOT A FIT IF YOU

• Have only run a single brand account, however large

• Managed the scheduling tool but never owned the growth outcome

• Need a big team under you to operate. Your leverage here is creators and systems.

STRUCTURE & COMP

You'll report directly to Luke McGurrin, Co-Founder & CMO, and work alongside our Co-Founder & CEO Karthik Shanadi and our Director of Sales, Collin Knowles.

We kept this flexible on purpose. Full-time ($65,000-$85,000, depending on experience) or a monthly retainer as a contractor with a defined path to full-time at 6 months. We built the retainer option for creators who want to keep their own thing going, and we fit the package to the person.

A note on the posted range: it's a starting point, not a ceiling. Final comp will be based on fair market value and your experience. If you've run this playbook at scale and you're in a higher bracket, apply anyway. We'd rather have that conversation than miss the right person over a number.

TO APPLY

Apply here and include links to your portfolio and the accounts or network you grew, plus one paragraph on the most impressive social growth you've ever driven: what it was, the numbers, the timeline, and what you actually did. If you've managed creators, tell us how many and how you ran them.