About the Role

Gusto is looking for a Paid Social Marketing Lead to own our paid social program end-to-end, from brand awareness through conversion, across social channels such as Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok. This is a high-visibility, high-impact role at the intersection of performance marketing, creative strategy, and AI-powered workflow design. You will serve as the strategic lead for paid acquisition across paid social and adjacent channels, setting the framework for how paid media operates within Gusto's demand generation engine. You'll have full strategic and creative latitude over one of Gusto's most important acquisition channels, with direct influence on pipeline and revenue. If you're a full-funnel paid social operator who thinks in systems, holds creative and data rigor in equal measure, and uses AI as a genuine daily tool, we want to meet you.

About the Team

As a member of Gusto’s Demand Generation team, you will be embedded specifically within Paid Acquisition, a focused group responsible for driving awareness and pipeline through paid media. This team operates with high autonomy, a bias for experimentation, and a culture of cross-functional partnership. We hold ourselves to a high standard, move fast, and genuinely believe that being AI-native is part of what it means to do this job well today.

Here's what you'll do day-to-day:

• Own paid social strategy and execution across Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and TikTok, driving full-funnel campaigns from brand awareness through retargeting and conversion, with accountability to pipeline and revenue targets.
• Manage significant, multi-million dollar budgets with rigor, including campaign pacing, forecasting, budget-vs-actuals analysis, and making the case for paid social investment in imperfect attribution environments.
• Define and socialize Gusto's paid acquisition measurement framework, including attribution philosophy and budget allocation principles, establishing this as the standard for the broader marketing team.
• Lead creative strategy and testing at scale: briefing creative studios and agencies, structuring meaningful experiments, interpreting complex data sets to drive actionable insights, and building a clear learning roadmap.
• Act as Gusto's internal subject matter expert on paid social and AI-powered marketing workflows, developing playbooks and frameworks adopted across the marketing org.
• Partner with Web Marketing to align on landing page strategy, message match, and post-click conversion, because paid social performance doesn't end at the click.
• Manage agencies and contractors, and an IC by setting clear expectations, reviewing quality, and holding partners accountable to results.
• Use AI tools as a consistent, habitual part of your workflow: generating campaign briefs, developing copy variants, accelerating audience research, and building reusable systems that raise the bar for the whole team.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Integrated Marketing, Communications, and Web to align paid social with integrated campaigns, product launches, and earned media moments, and bring performance data back upstream to influence creative production and asset strategy.

Here's what we're looking for:

• 12+ years of paid social experience or equivalent at a B2B SaaS, performance marketing agency, or high-growth consumer organization.
• Full-funnel ownership across two or more major paid social platforms (Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, TikTok) with significant budget responsibility and a track record of driving measurable pipeline impact.
• Demonstrated experience managing external agencies and/or contractors, setting expectations, measuring performance, and holding partners to a high bar.
• Strong creative strategy and testing instincts: you know how to structure a test, distinguish a learning from a result, and translate performance data into creative direction.
• AI-fluent in practice, not just in theory; you use AI tools consistently in your day-to-day workflow to accelerate briefs, copy, and analysis, and have a track record of implementing AI-driven efficiencies for your team.
• Excellent cross-functional collaborator who can translate integrated briefs into paid social strategy, advocate for what the channel needs, and work effectively alongside brand, web, and comms partners.
• You are analytical and data-driven, with a clear point of view on attribution in imperfect measurement environments and comfort communicating paid social's contribution to business outcomes.

Compensation

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $151,020/yr to $180,000/yr in Denver, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Atlanta, and $177,550/yr to $210,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. The cash compensation range for Toronto is (CAD) $134,285 - $158,000. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

onX is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer with a passion for building scalable platform Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems. Your focus will be on designing, developing, and scaling secure authentication, authorization, and user management services that are foundational to our platform. You will play a key role in evolving our IAM platform and delivering seamless cross-platform authentication across iOS, Android, and web.

You will be part of our Core Services team that enables product teams to build faster and more securely by providing core infrastructure, services, and patterns. This is a great opportunity to help shape the future of how users securely access and interact with onX's suite of outdoor technology products.

This position reports to the Director of Engineering, Core Services.

TECHNOLOGIES WE USE

Our backend engineers primarily work in Go running in Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform. The IAM team works extensively with identity platforms (Ory Kratos, Hydra, Oathkeeper), distributed databases (CockroachDB), and OAuth 2.0/session management patterns. Understanding mobile authentication tradeoffs (WebView vs. browser-based auth, token-based patterns) is particularly relevant for this role.

As an onX Senior Backend Engineer, your day to day responsibilities would look like:

(Essential Job Duties)

• Build scalable, secure IAM services that enable new features and products across the onX suite of apps
• Design and implement backend systems focusing on observability, fault-tolerance, security, and high performance
• Drive architectural decisions related to Identity and Access Management, ensuring alignment with and advancing our broader platform strategy
• Define and implement SLIs/SLOs for IAM services; drive reliability engineering practices including incident response and performance optimization
• Write thorough unit, integration, and acceptance tests to ensure high service quality and maintainability
• Document APIs, service architectures, and technical decisions for internal stakeholders and external partners as needed
• Collaborate closely with fellow engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders through design reviews, paired programming, and cross-functional planning sessions
• Leverage and extend existing onX services and platform patterns to drive consistency and reduce duplication
• Proactively improve system monitoring, alerting, diagnostics, and operational readiness of IAM-related services
• Participate in an on-call rotation to ensure backend services remain highly available and reliable
• Mentor and share knowledge with engineers on your team
• Lead by example and embody onX's company values, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and collaboration
•  

LOCATION

onX has created a thriving distributed workforce community across several US locations. This position can be performed from an onX corporate office, “Basecamp,” or “Connection Hub". 

• Corporate Offices: onX was founded in Montana with offices in Missoula and Bozeman. If you prefer to work in an office at least part of the time this is a great option.
• Basecamps: Basecamps are established virtual workforce communities where a sizable number of distributed team members group for work, volunteering, socializing, and adventure.  
  • Our current Basecamps are located within a 90-mile radius of the following: Austin, TX; Charlotte, NC; Denver, CO; Kalispell, MT; Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; and Seattle, WA. 
• Connection Hubs: Connection Hub locations are smaller, emerging communities of distributed team members. 
  • Our current Connection Hubs are located within a 60-mile radius of the following: Boise, ID; Charleston, SC; Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Richmond, VA; Spokane, WA; and Vermont.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• B.S., M.S., or equivalent experience in computer science or a related field
• Eight or more years of professional software development experience, with API development as a primary focus for at least three of those years
• Strong Go/Golang backend development experience with RESTful API design
• Experience building and debugging distributed, scalable, highly available microservices architecture
• Solid understanding of identity systems: OAuth 2.0, session management, bearer token authentication, SSO integrations
• Experience with distributed databases (CockroachDB or similar PostgreSQL-compatible distributed systems) and relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Excellence in designing and developing modern APIs and scalable systems that ensure reliability and extensibility
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform
• Strong computer science foundation
• Security-first mindset -- you think about threat models, secure defaults, and defense in depth as part of your design process
• You evaluate technologies and solutions based on merit, stability, performance, and the ability to debug
• Ability to write maintainable, well-tested code that's easy for others to understand
• A strong sense of ownership of your work
• Advocacy for customers -- both internal colleagues and end users -- and their experience
• Permanent US work authorization is a condition of employment with onX

Preferred Qualifications

Though not required, we would be thrilled to consider candidates with any of the following:

• Experience with identity platforms such as Ory Kratos, Auth0, Cognito, or similar
• Experience with the Ory Stack, especially Hydra, Kratos, and Oathkeeper
• Experience with Authzed SpiceDB, Google Zanzibar, or AWS Cedar for fine-grained authorization
• Understanding of mobile authentication patterns: WebView vs. browser auth tradeoffs, token-based flows across iOS/Android/web
• Reliability engineering experience: SLI/SLO implementation, incident response, performance optimization
• SOC2 compliance experience or familiarity with security audit frameworks
• Experience with Elixir or the Phoenix Framework
• Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform
• Experience working with a distributed team

COMPENSATION

onX is committed to compensating all employees fairly and equitably for their contributions. For this position, applicants can expect to make between $146,000 to $182,000 upon hire. The pay range will vary based on experience, skills, certifications, and education among other factors as required in the job description. In addition, full-time onX employees are eligible for a grant of common share options with a vesting schedule and a potential annual bonus of 10% based on company performance.

WHAT WE ARE OFFERING YOU

• Competitive salaries, annual bonuses, equity, and opportunities for growth
• Comprehensive health benefits including a no-monthly-cost medical plan 
• Parental leave plan of 5 or 13 weeks fully paid
• 401k matching at 100% for the first 3% you save and 50% from 3-5%
• Company-wide outdoor adventures and amazing outdoor industry perks
• Annual “Get Out, Get Active” funds to fuel your active lifestyle in and outside of the gym
• Flexible time away package that includes PTO, STO, VTO, quiet weeks, and floating holidays

PERFORMANCE ESSENTIALS

In this role, success is driven by cognitive abilities such as concentration and problem-solving, essential for our computer-centric tasks. onX will explore reasonable accommodations to ensure that individuals with diverse abilities can fully engage in and contribute to the essential physical and mental functions of the job. If you need assistance or accommodation, please contact us at PS@onxmaps.com. 

Position open until filled. 

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