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.

The Opportunity

Gusto Embedded Payroll (GEP) is one of Gusto's highest-growth bets — a platform business that enables software companies to offer Gusto-powered payroll directly within their own products. We're looking for a Head of Partner Growth to lead the team responsible for making our embedded partners successful: driving go-to-market execution, growing partner revenue, and building the operational and strategic frameworks that will scale this business toward $100M+.

This is a player-coach leadership role. You'll manage a cross-functional team spanning Partner Success Management (PSM) and Partner enablement— while also staying deeply hands-on with our most strategic partner relationships. You'll own the partner growth playbook end-to-end: from GTM planning and launch sequencing through ongoing optimization, escalation management, and executive relationship development.

Gusto's partnerships organization focuses on evaluating and executing strategic partnerships in new categories. Gusto Embedded Payroll allows us to bring our people platform to thousands more businesses than those we serve directly and will play a key role in Gusto's growth.

What It's Like to Work in This Role

Lead & Develop

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of Partner Success Managers and Partner Enablement
• Set the operational rhythm for the partner growth function — including planning cadences, escalation workflows, and performance management
• Coach team members on partner strategy, executive communication, and cross-functional navigation
• Drive Enablement with the ideation, creation, and execution of enablement frameworks and materials.
• Drive AI fluency across the team — embedding AI tools and workflows into day-to-day partner operations, GTM planning, and internal knowledge management to accelerate output and decision quality

Strategize & Plan

• Own the partner growth strategy across the GEP portfolio, including partner segmentation, prioritization, and resource allocation
• Develop and maintain per-partner operating plans with clear success metrics, in collaboration with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales Enablement
• Build repeatable GTM playbooks — covering co-marketing motions, sales enablement, content roadmaps, and launch sequencing — tailored to each partner's distribution model and ICP
• Translate portfolio-level data (revenue, attach rates, funnel performance) into strategic narratives for leadership

Operate & Execute

• Drive success for our partners and their end customers through adoption, activation, and retention of Gusto-powered embedded products
• Own the full marketing funnel and sales motion with partners — from top-of-funnel demand generation through conversion, onboarding, and expansion
• Manage complex, high-stakes partner relationships directly — including contract negotiations, executive escalations, and cross-functional alignment on roadmap priorities
• Lead partner incident response and escalation management with structured, cross-functional workflows

Build for Scale

• Create and expand the feedback loop between partners, their end users, and Gusto's internal product, marketing, engineering, and operations teams
• Design frameworks, templates, and processes that enable the team to manage a growing partner portfolio without linear headcount growth
• Identify and implement AI-powered workflows and tools that improve team efficiency, partner reporting, and knowledge management

What We're Looking For

• 12-15 years of experience, with 8+ years in a people management role and 7+ years in partner-facing or channel-facing roles
• Partner-side perspective: Has operated on the partner or channel side of the table — understands how partners evaluate, prioritize, and activate embedded or referral relationships
• Farmer mentality: Wired to grow and deepen existing partner relationships through trust-building, strategic account planning, and proactive expansion — not just hunting new deals
• Methodical operator: Builds repeatable playbooks, escalation frameworks, and operational rhythms rather than relying on one-off heroics. Strong systems thinker
• GTM playbook experience: Hands-on experience building go-to-market plans from scratch — including co-marketing, keyword strategies, content roadmaps, and launch sequencing
• Full-funnel fluency: Understands the complete marketing and sales journey from demand gen through conversion, activation, and retention. Can diagnose where a partner motion is leaking value and prescribe the right intervention
• AI fluency: Actively uses AI tools (e.g., LLMs, automation platforms) to accelerate workflows, improve decision quality, and build team capability. Comfortable leading an AI adoption agenda within a team
• Executive communicator: Strong ghostwriter and strategic communicator who can represent the partnership function credibly with C-suite stakeholders — both internally and at partner organizations
• Strong sense of ownership and resilience: Thrives in ambiguity, takes initiative, and drives outcomes without waiting for permission
• Exceptional written and verbal communication: Can shift register fluently between partner-facing emails, internal Slack, leadership documents, and board-level narratives

Strong Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with embedded or platform business models (APIs, developer tools, B2B2B)
• Knowledge of payroll, HR tech, or fintech software ecosystems
• Experience managing partner P&Ls, cost-to-manage models, or portfolio-level financial analysis
• "Gets" the building-mode opportunity — has scaled a partner function from early stage, not just inherited a mature program

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at:
$230,215 - $270,500 in San Francisco, CA; New York, NY 
$195,745 - $230,000 in Denver, CO;  Phoenix, AZ; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Las Vegas, NV

If you are outside of the geographic areas above, your application will not be considered at this time.

Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Why this role is exciting

This is a high-impact role at the intersection of data science, mapping, and real-world mobility systems. You’ll work on the data and algorithms that define how Vay’s vehicles navigate cities safely and efficiently within our Operational Design Domain (ODD). Your work will directly unlock our ability to scale to new cities, improve routing performance, and solve complex real-world challenges in a rapidly evolving mobility environment.

What you’ll be driving

In this role, you will play a critical part in advancing Vay’s mapping and routing capabilities using data science and machine learning approaches.

• Develop automated approaches to map augmentation using video, connectivity, trip data, and open datasets such as OpenStreetMap.

• Build data science solutions that accelerate map creation and updates for new cities where Vay launches.

• Design and develop routing simulation tools to discover optimal strategies for improving ETA and ATA accuracy.

• Lead and contribute to initiatives within the Operational Design Domain (ODD) data science pod.

• Identify and automate inefficiencies in map generation workflows to enable faster and more frequent updates.

• Work cross-functionally with engineering, operations, and product teams to implement and deploy production-grade solutions.

• Help scale the impact of the data science team by driving key initiatives and reducing knowledge concentration on critical ODD topics.

What are we looking for

We’re looking for a data scientist who enjoys solving complex real-world problems and turning experimental ideas into production systems that power next-generation mobility.

• Strong experience applying data science or machine learning techniques to real-world problems.

• Ability to write high-quality, production-grade code.

• Experience building and deploying applied data science solutions across the full lifecycle—from concept to implementation and rollout.

• Strong Python experience and familiarity with modern data science workflows (e.g., Jupyter, GitHub, cloud compute environments).

• Experience working with geospatial data, routing systems, or map-based datasets is highly valuable.

• Comfortable working cross-functionally and owning complex initiatives in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to have

• Prior engineering experience or strong software engineering foundations.

• Experience with technologies such as Spark, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar ML frameworks.

Why choose Vay

💪 A global team of smart, motivated people from 30+ countries who love tackling hard problems and turning bold ideas into reality.

🌍 Huge scope for impact in a fast paced environment

💰 ESOP stock options: A stake in Vay’s future – not just a salary.

🌴 Unlimited Paid Vacation Days

🎫 401(k) programme

🏥 Health, Dental & Vision Insurance 

🚗 All Vay team members receive 30% off their Vay rides

🏋️‍♂️ Wellness Hub free gym access & wellness app subscriptions

🛍️ Exclusive external discounts

💼 $350 Home office budget 

✈️ Relocation financial assistance when relocating to Las Vegas 

🎊 Regular team events throughout the year