30th October, 2026
Our client in Buffalo, NY, is looking to add a Head of Marketing to their team!
This is a hybrid/full-time/direct-hire position
Salary range depending on experience: $200-$250k
The Role
We're hiring the first marketing and go-to-market leader for our client. You will be on the founding team, budgeted from month one, and you will own every part of how the product reaches customers: positioning, launch, acquisition, activation, retention, and the bank partner channel. The title is Head of Marketing & Go-to-Market with a path to CMO as the company scales.
The job has two motions, and the first one matters more in the first 18 months.
- Consumer launch. Take our client's debit card from pre-launch waitlist to launch to scale. The scoreboard is cards acquired, cost per funded card, direct deposit activation, monthly spend per active card, and retention. A debit rewards card lives or dies on whether people move their everyday spend to it, so lifecycle and activation are as much your job as top-of-funnel.
- Bank channel. Position our client as the rewards engine a community bank can turn on for its existing debit base. That means a sales narrative that answers a bank's questions (interchange economics, deposit growth, retention, core and processor fit), partner marketing through the core provider marketplaces, and co-marketing playbooks that move a bank's cardholders into the program once a deal closes.
The emphasis is consumer fintech growth. You should be excellent at acquiring and activating cardholders for a card, neobank, or rewards product, and fully capable of running a B2B motion to banks when the pipeline calls for it. You will do the work yourself early on, with AI tools and contractors as leverage, and build the team as the numbers earn it.
What You'll Do Consumer Launch and Acquisition - Own the consumer GTM plan: positioning, ICP definition, messaging, pricing and earn-rate input, channel strategy, and the launch plan from waitlist through the first 100,000 cards
- Build and run the acquisition engine: paid social, paid search, SEO and content, influencer and affiliate (including the points-and-miles creator community), referral loops, and partnerships with travel and loyalty audiences
- Design the pre-launch program: waitlist, early-access tiers, founding-member offers, and the signal tests that tell us which audiences and messages convert before we spend at scale
- Own the premium tier funnel: positioning, pricing tests, and conversion of cardholders into the AI travel concierge subscription
Activation, Lifecycle, and Retention - Own the path from approved card to active card: first swipe, direct deposit set-up, wallet linking, and first redemption, with push, email, SMS, and in-app lifecycle built around the moments of spend and travel
- Build the retention program: points balance and travel-value visibility, deal alerts, redemption campaigns, and win-back for cards that go quiet
- Partner with product on in-app surfaces (push-on-earn, balance cards, book-travel CTAs) so the product itself does the marketing
Bank Channel go-to-market - Build the bank sales narrative: the pitch deck, interchange economics one-pagers, case studies, and objection handling for bank CEOs, retail heads, and card product managers
- Run partner marketing with Fiserv, Jack Henry, and Q2: marketplace listings, co-marketing, and conference and event presence
- Build the bank co-marketing playbook that enrolls a partner bank's existing debit cardholders into our client at launch, and measure the enrollment rate bank by bank
- Support outbound: target lists, sequences, and the content that gets a first meeting with a community bank
Brand, Analytics, and Operations - Own our client's brand: voice, visual identity direction, card design input, creative briefs, and the agencies and freelancers who execute them
- Stand up marketing analytics from day one: CAC by channel, cost per funded card, activation and direct deposit rates, spend per active card, LTV, cohort retention, payback period, and attribution, with a dashboard the board sees every month
- Run marketing compliance with the sponsor bank and card network: claims review, disclosures, and network brand rules, so nothing ships that a regulator or the bank would pull
- Use AI tools aggressively across content, creative, analytics, and automation; we expect leverage, not headcount
- Hire and manage contractors and agencies, and build the in-house team as the funnel earns it
What We're Looking For - 7+ years in growth or marketing roles with meaningful time as the owner of results, not a contributor
- Consumer fintech growth track record: you've acquired customers at scale for a card, neobank, rewards, lending, or payments product, and you can talk specifics (channels, budgets, CAC, funded-account rates, what worked, what didn't)
- You understand card economics: interchange, the difference between an approved card and an active one, why direct deposit is the retention lever, and how rewards earn rates trade off against margin
- Launch experience: you've taken a product from nothing to its first customers and know how to find signal before there's data
- Real B2B experience: you've built or run at least one B2B GTM motion (demand gen, product marketing, or sales-led) and can write a deck that makes a bank executive lean in
- Full-stack capability: you write the brief, build the campaign, read the dashboard, and adjust; early on you'll do the work yourself
- Strong analytical foundation: fluent in funnel math, unit economics, cohort analysis, attribution, and experimentation
- Comfortable marketing in a regulated environment: you've worked through compliance review with a bank, issuer, or network and know what you can and cannot say
- Hands-on with the modern stack: ad platforms, marketing automation and CRM, product analytics, CMS and landing page builders, and current AI tools
- Strong writing and storytelling; you can sell a rewards card to a consumer in a headline and a rewards program to a bank board in a deck
Nice to Have - Time at a neobank, card issuer, or rewards-first fintech (a debit rewards card, a travel card, or a points program) where you owned acquisition or lifecycle
- Travel or loyalty industry experience: airline or hotel programs, an OTA, or a points-and-miles brand; credibility with the points community is a real asset here
- Experience selling into or marketing to community banks and credit unions, or working with the core and digital banking providers (Fiserv, Jack Henry, Q2)
- Subscription or premium-tier marketing experience; the AI travel concierge is a paid upgrade
- Experience in a venture studio, incubator, or zero-to-one environment
- Buffalo or Western New York ties, or a desire to build here
Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S.
We are an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or employment against any individual on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, pregnancy, citizenship, or any other factor protected by anti-discrimination laws.
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