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Earnest empowers ambitious professionals to make confident financial decisions and build the life they envision.
Earnies are committed to helping borrowers move forward with confidence by offering smarter borrowing options with a clearer path to taking control of their debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together.
The Director of Growth Marketing - Performance will report to our VP of Performance Marketing.
As a Director of Growth Marketing - Performance, you will:
- Own Core Channel Performance: Start by evaluating current strategy, execution, and performance then set the plan to accelerate results (SEM, Paid Social, SEO/AEO).
- Aggressively Expand into New High-ROI Channels: Own the channel expansion strategy–prioritization, testing, and the call to scale (Programmatic, OTT, OOH, Streaming Audio, etc.). Build the measurement frameworks with the analytics/attribution team so each scale decision is backed by data.
- Build the paid channel strategy for Personal Loans: As the company shifts from single-product to multi-product lending in 2027. Set how budget, channel mix, and testing priorities shift as PL scales alongside new products.
- Transform how the team works into an AI-first marketing organization: identify which workflows AI can take over or accelerate, and drive adoption within the first 90 days.
- Develop Team Structure and Strategy: define the ideal mix of FTE, contract, agency and AI capacity to drive the most impact.
- Act as player-coach to a team of Growth Marketing Managers: Setting strategy and staying hands-on with campaign builds, testing, and analysis.
About You:
- Energized by the pace of change in paid marketing–always looking for the next way to win.
- Data drives everything you do–but you're not afraid to trust your intuition or run an experiment when data is incomplete or slow to arrive.
- You want to have a massive impact within the company and are energized by ambiguity rather than needing a fully defined playbook.
- Cross-functional leadership: you can develop a vision, get buy-in from stakeholders who don't report to you (product, data science, compliance, advanced analytics), and see it through to completion.
- Comfortable operating at both altitudes–setting long term strategy in one meeting and analyzing SEM performance in the next.
- A builder's mindset: energized by creating something from scratch, not just optimizing an existing machine.
Even Better:
- Experience in fintech, lending, or another regulated B2C category.
- Experience at a high-growth startup or growth-stage company.
- Strong SQL–you don’t have to wait for an analyst, you get your own answers and can coach your team to do the same.
- Piloted and scaled advanced measurement approaches (incrementality testing, geo holdouts, MMM, MTA).
- You will be accountable for being on the cutting edge of new channels, and moving them into testing quickly.
- You will be building the data-driven machine–this is not a defined playbook or "operate an existing machine" type of role.
- This is a player/coach role with meaningful hands-on-keyboard time.
- The expectation is that AI will transform how the team operates and impact every critical workflow within the first 90 days.
- This role requires navigating a regulated environment–every new channel and personalization tactic needs to clear compliance before it ships, which will shape your pace and process.
Where:
- This role will be based in the US.
Compensation:
A little about our pay philosophy: We take pride in compensating our employees fairly and equitably. We are showcasing a range of your potential base salary based on the roles location. The successful candidate’s starting pay will also be determined based on job-related qualifications, internal compensation, candidate location and budget. This range may be modified in the future.
Salary Range: $186,000 - $232,000 USD. Employees are also eligible for an annual performance-based bonus and equity.
#LI-JP
Earnest believes in enabling our employees to live their best lives. We offer a variety of perks and competitive benefits, including:
- Health, Dental, & Vision benefits plus savings plans
- Mac computers + work-from-home stipend to set up your home office
- Monthly internet and phone reimbursement
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
- 401(k) plan to help you save for retirement plus a company match
- Robust tuition reimbursement program
- $1,000 travel perk on each Earnie-versary to anywhere in the world
- Competitive days of annual PTO
- Competitive parental leave
What Makes an Earnie:
At Earnest, our people bring our cultural principles to life. These principles define how we work, how we win, and what we expect of ourselves and each other:
- Every Second Counts: Speed is our competitive advantage. Our customers need better solutions, and the faster we execute, the greater our chance of success.
- Choose To Do Hard Things: We win by tackling the hard things that others avoid, fueled by grit and resilience.
- Pursue Excellence: Great companies, teams, and individuals never settle and are proud of the work that they do. What’s good enough today won’t be good enough tomorrow. Excellence isn’t a destination; it’s a mindset of continuous improvement.
- Lead Together: Our success comes from how we work together. Leadership is not about titles—it is about action. We take ownership, drive results, and move forward as a team.
- Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously: We take our work seriously, not ourselves. The stakes are high, but a sense of humor keeps us grounded, creative, and resilient.
At Earnest, we are committed to building an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging enables us to move forward with our mission. We are dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and encourage anyone to apply if your experience is close to what we are looking for.
Earnest provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or genetics. Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for the position in a manner consistent with the Fair Chance Ordinance.
Skills Required
- Experience developing and executing paid marketing channel strategy, including SEM, paid social, SEO/AEO, campaign testing, and performance analysis.
- Ability to establish channel expansion strategies, prioritize testing, and scale high-return acquisition channels.
- Experience building data-driven measurement and attribution frameworks in partnership with analytics or advanced analytics teams.
- Cross-functional leadership experience, including gaining stakeholder support across product, data science, analytics, and compliance.
- Ability to operate as a player-coach, setting strategy while remaining hands-on with campaign builds, testing, and analysis.
- Ability to work effectively in ambiguous, fast-changing, high-growth environments and build new marketing capabilities from scratch.
- Experience with fintech, lending, or another regulated business-to-consumer category.
- Experience at a high-growth startup or growth-stage company.
- Strong SQL skills.
- Experience piloting and scaling advanced measurement approaches such as incrementality testing, geo holdouts, marketing mix modeling, or multi-touch attribution.
Earnest Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Earnest and has not been reviewed or approved by Earnest.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Compensation is considered competitive for many roles and locations, with bonuses and long‑term incentives contributing to total pay. Public postings show explicit salary ranges that help set expectations across functions.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Paid time off is described as generous for both exempt and non‑exempt employees. Additional elements like paid holidays, sick time, volunteer time, and flexible schedules strengthen time‑away access.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — A remote‑first model, home‑office stipends, monthly internet/phone reimbursement, and Mac hardware support day‑to‑day flexibility. A distinctive annual travel credit on work anniversaries adds meaningful lifestyle value.
Earnest Insights
What We Do
We empower past, present, and soon-to-be students to maximize their financial futures through thoughtful guidance and impactful products. We build tools that help people feel in control of their financial future, including: 1. Student Loan Refinancing - break free from high interest rates or monthly payments. 2. Private Student Loans - low rates, people-first service, and flexible payments. 3. Debt Management - manage all your accounts and become debt-free sooner. 4. Scholarships - access to thousands of scholarships to help students pay less.
Why Work With Us
We strive to maintain and strengthen diversity and inclusion through employee-led Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that empower our Earnies to step into leadership roles and drive our culture. Through ERGs, and with the support of our Executives, we provide a safe space for all Earnies to be their true selves.
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