Insurance is a $10T industry still running on PDFs, email threads, and manual reconciliation. Ascend is changing that. We built the first and only complete financial operations platform purpose-built for insurance — combining AI-powered accounting automation, payments, and premium financing in a single vertically integrated solution. In five years, we've become the market leader: over 4,000 businesses, including more than half of the 50 largest brokers in the country, trust Ascend to bring clarity to complex accounting operations — from collection to close.
How We Do ItAscend automates the financial operations that insurers, MGAs, and agencies run every day — and embeds directly into the transactions where money actually moves.
AI is driving the cost of software toward zero. The companies that win won't just sell tools — they'll capture value at the point of the transaction itself. Ascend is built for exactly that moment. Our customers don't just adopt software; they unlock measurable efficiency with a proven 5–7x return on investment.
Our 70+ person team, based in San Francisco and Columbus, brings together deep expertise in insurance, fintech, and AI to build infrastructure the industry has never had.
Why We Do ItThe insurance industry intermediates trillions of dollars — and almost none of that infrastructure was built for the modern era. Legacy systems aren't just inefficient; they're a ceiling on what the industry can become.
Ascend's mission is to become the leading financial automation platform for insurance by 2030 — powering the financial operations of the entire industry and transforming the way trillions of dollars move. We're not building another point solution. We're building the financial backbone of insurance.
Your role
We are currently seeking our founding PMM hire to define our product marketing strategy as well as execution. You will act as a bridge between Product, Marketing and Sales to use your research to influence the roadmap and positioning of existing and new feature launches. Under your direction, you will directly translate product strategy to influence marketing campaigns, sales motions, and sales collateral.
As the first PMM hire, you will need to be comfortable wearing many hats, detail oriented, and comfortable working in a fast paced environment. This role reports direct into the Head of Marketing and will work closely with team members across design, product, sales, and customer success.
Responsibilities will include:
Objective #1: In the first 30 days, you will learn how to position Ascend across different products, personas, and customer segments.
- Dive into sales and customer calls to learn about our customer, their challenges, and how Ascend helps prospects overcome these problems.
- Own the design, messaging, and creation across sales decks, one pagers, case studies to reinforce our market positioning + messaging.
- Conduct internal and external research to understand the current competitive landscape for Ascend.
Objective #2: In your first 60 days, you entrench yourself with product to translate product roadmap into sales and marketing messaging.
- Be an expert on our product, workflows, integrations - all the surfaces that we touch to be able to clearly overlay Ascend over legacy workflows.
- Work closely with product to translate new features functionality into value propositions within the sales motion and across collateral.
- Coordinate GTM campaigns across owned channels (email, in-product, website)
Objective #3: In your first 90 days, you will translate messaging and positioning into sales enablement and strategy by working hand in hand with sales.
- Own the evolution of our value props and positioning against competitors as new features or competitive products are released.
- Be able to report back on the learnings, successes, and area of improvements for our messaging across product, sales, and customer success.
- Conduct win/loss analysis to understand what messaging and positioning is working or not working across different segments.
You might be a good fit if you are / have
- Hands-On Experience: You have 2+ years of experience working in a similar industry (fin-tech, health-tech, etc.), you move fast, and you get things done without waiting for someone to hand you a perfect process.
- Brand Driven Storyteller: You get that messaging shapes how people perceive a company, and you know the difference between brand awareness and brand perception — and why both matter.
- Creative and Analytical: You are able to use both the left and right sides of your brain — you have an eye for design but can also dive into data.
- Customer Focused: You care deeply about your customers and their problems and want to deeply understand, relate to, and connect with our customer base. You're down to hop on calls with them directly — insurance is a main-street business where relationships matter.
- Outcome-Oriented: You have a track record of owning a function and delivering measurable results, and you'd rather work through problems live with your team than grind away on your own.
Compensation: $100,000-130,000
Benefits
- Meaningful equity
- 100% health premiums covered for you and your dependents
- 401k with employer matching options
- A fast growing team with an emphasis on promoting from within 80% of all hires in the last 12 months have already been promoted!
- Unlimited PTO
- Company paid commuter benefits
- Parental and family leave
- Lunch everyday
- Dog-friendly office!
We are committed to equal opportunity employment and embrace diversity within our organization. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
We encourage candidates to apply even if their experience doesn't precisely match this opportunity. We value diversity and are dedicated to equal opportunity employment.
Skills Required
- 2+ years of product marketing or related experience in fintech, health-tech, insurance, or similar industries
- Experience designing messaging, sales decks, one-pagers, and case studies
- Experience conducting competitive analysis, win/loss analysis, and customer research
- Ability to translate product roadmap and feature functionality into GTM messaging and value propositions
- Experience coordinating GTM campaigns across email, in-product, and website channels
- Strong storytelling, written communication, and design sensibility
- Customer-facing experience; willing to join sales and customer calls
- Outcome-oriented and data-driven; able to report on learnings and improvements
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup and wearing many hats
- Onsite presence 5 days per week at SoMa office (San Francisco)
What We Do
Ascend is the first modern insurance payments platform that provides automated, all-in-one financing, collections, and payables. We help distributors sell more by eliminating labor intensive processes and providing customers with the great online checkout experience they expect. We’re hiring across GTM, engineering and business functions - email us at [email protected] if you're interested in learning more.
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