The Role
Lead end-to-end growth for a pre-launch consumer hardware startup: set strategy, build brand voice, grow a pre-launch audience, run creative-led paid and organic programs, manage contractors and a small team, use AI to accelerate content and research, and report on full-funnel KPIs to drive acquisition, activation, and retention.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Overlay
The Role
What You’ll Do
What We’re Looking For
Bonus Points
Benefits
The Team
Culture & Values
Overlay is building the world’s first intelligent makeup robot—reimagining beauty application through robotics, perception, and design. As a venture-backed, pre-launch startup, we’re defining a new category of personal robotics at the intersection of self-expression and engineering. Our system operates directly on the human face, requiring an unprecedented level of precision, safety, and real-world robustness.
We've raised significant funding and we're a small, technical team building in person in Oakland. We're making something real that doesn't exist yet — and we're looking for a marketer to help the world fall in love with it.
You'll be our first marketing hire, which means you'll have a rare amount of say in how Overlay shows up in the world including the brand's voice, the launch, our first community. You'll set the growth strategy and help build it, hands-on, alongside the founder.
This is a senior role, but it's a builder's role too — the kind where you get to make the work, not just direct it. Early on you'll do a lot yourself, with support from contractors for video, content, and creative. As we grow, you'll build out a small team. We'll figure out the right pace together.
Our customer has high standards and great taste, and reaching her in a way that feels native and a little magic is the heart of the job. If you've connected with a customer like that before through brand, culture, or craft we'd love to talk.
What makes this role exciting:
- You shape the playbook. There's no template to inherit — the brand and the launch are yours to define, with real support from the team.
- Brand and growth live together here. You own both the creative point of view and the results it drives, without silos or handoffs.
- The product is genuinely fun to share. A makeup robot wants to be filmed. The interesting challenge is directing that attention with taste.
- You can build an audience before launch. It's a chance to grow a community early, so we arrive to real demand.
- You'll work closely with the founder and see your ideas reach customers quickly.
- Shape and own our growth strategy: how we reach, win, and keep our customers.
- Develop a distinctive, premium point of view and carry it across everything we make.
- Build a creative and content operation across social, UGC, and video, with help from contractors and partners.
- Blend online and offline — social presence plus demos, events, and experiences people want to share.
- Get close to our customer through research, so our launch messaging really lands.
- Grow an engaged audience before launch through beauty and skincare content, education, and community.
- Track what's working with clear, full-funnel metrics, and use a regular rhythm of reviews to keep learning and adjusting.
- Use AI across content, research, and ops to do more with a small team.
You don't need to check every box so if most of this sounds like you, please apply.
- Several years of growth or brand marketing experience with consumer products, including some experience guiding or mentoring others.
- A knack for reaching a premium, design-minded customer — through brand, culture, or craft.
- Comfort with paid social (Meta and/or TikTok) and a feel for what makes creative work on those platforms.
- A self-starter streak — you're happy to pick up an idea and run with it.
- Ease with ambiguity, change, and the occasional blank page.
- AI is part of how you work, and you have a point of view on it.
- Experience working in beauty and an understanding of makeup and/or skincare subcultures online
- Consumer hardware experience, especially early-stage.
- You've built or scaled a UGC or creator program.
- You've grown a newsletter, social following, or community from scratch.
- You've run pop-ups, demos, dinners, or activations as a growth channel.
- You can cut a quick video or design an asset to test an idea on your own.
- A real love of makeup, skincare, beauty, and its subcultures.
- Highly competitive salary & generous early-stage equity
- Best-in-class medical, dental & vision insurance
- 401(k) matching program
- Flexible Time Off with 10 paid holidays
- Commuter benefits
- Office in downtown Oakland near 19th Street BART station
- Small, fast-moving team with high ownership and low process
- Strong bias toward shipping, learning, and iterating quickly
- In-person collaboration in our Oakland office
- Move Fast, Move Smart: act quickly, with good judgment.
- Ownership: see things through, from idea to result.
- Disagree, Then Commit: talk it out openly, then row in the same direction.
- Intellectual Honesty: be candid, stay curious, follow the evidence.
- Show, Don't Tell: real, working results over talk.
Compensation: The annual salary range for this position is $150,000–$225,000 annually based on level in addition to equity & benefits.
Overlay is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of experience in growth marketing
- At least 2+ years managing people
- Consumer product experience, ideally hardware
- Experience building or scaling UGC or creator programs
- Proficiency with Meta Ads Manager and/or TikTok Ads Manager
- Deep understanding of creative performance, hooks, retention curves, and platform formats (TikTok, Instagram)
- AI-native workflow experience (using AI for creative, research, personalization, and ops)
- Strong quantitative skills; define, set, and report on full-funnel KPIs and run weekly performance reviews
- Experience producing or managing video/content production, live demos, or offline activations
- Self-directed, fast executor comfortable in ambiguous, pre-product startup environments
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The Company
What We Do
Overlay is building the world’s first intelligent makeup robot—reimagining beauty application through robotics, perception, and design.
