Growth Marketing Lead

About this role

Location: Remote (US). NYC, Dallas, or Austin preferred

Compensation: Competitive startup comp and meaningful equity upside

Department: Growth / Marketing

Reports to: Head of Growth

Also posted as: Senior Growth Manager · Performance Marketing Lead · User Acquisition Lead · Senior Growth Marketer

ABOUT RARE CANDY

Rare Candy is revolutionizing the $25 billion trading-card industry as the only community marketplace 100% dedicated to TCGs. Collectors use our AI-powered card scanner, data-rich collection tools, and jaw-dropping drops to buy, sell, rip, and showcase Pokémon, MTG, Lorcana, One Piece, and more. We've hit 10x revenue growth over the last 6 months, the business is highly profitable, and we're building the team to take this from a great product to a category-defining one. We're a 10-person team moving fast and looking for the next set of TCG-obsessed rock stars to join our team.

THE ROLE

We're looking for a hands-on-keyboard Growth Marketing Lead to own the day-to-day engine that turns attention into active users into buyers, and first-time buyers into repeat collectors. This is a senior individual contributor role: you're the one who actually runs the channels, writes the briefs, reads the numbers, and ships the next test. Not a manager building a team, a builder building a machine.

You'll own performance marketing channels end-to-end, spearhead our influencer and content efforts as accountable performance programs, support the lifecycle work that keeps collectors coming back, and own the ideation, testing, and optimization of performance creative that drives conversions.

You own channel execution, test velocity, attribution hygiene, and performance recommendations. The Head of Growth sets priorities, and our content and community team owns the brand and creator voice, so you'll partner closely with them without stepping on the brand they own.

And profitable is the word that matters. We've hit 10x revenue growth and we're profitable, which means we're not buying growth at any price. We're building growth that pays for itself. If you get genuinely excited about efficient CAC, defensible spend, and creative that actually performs, you'll love it here.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

First 30 days: You take over day-to-day management of our existing performance channels so nothing coasts, get our attribution and reporting into a state we can actually trust, and ship at least one optimization or test that moves the needle. You spin up tests of new channels and quickly incorporate preliminary data into useful insights for future optimizations and priorities.

First few months: Paid is running to efficiently, well-understood CAC and payback. Our influencer and content efforts run like accountable programs: briefed, tracked, attributed, optimized. You've started shipping performance creative and lifecycle campaigns that lift repeat purchasing.

By end of year one, you own a profitable, measurable day-to-day growth engine. Paid is managed to efficient unit economics, lifecycle drives repeat purchases, influencer and content programs are accountable to numbers, and the performance creative you concepted and shipped is doing real work. Every dollar spent is defensible with the data you maintain.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Run performance marketing: own the day-to-day across paid channels, manage to efficient CAC and payback. Hands on the keyboard, not just on the strategy deck.

- Own performance creative: concept, brief, produce, and iterate the ad creative and hooks that make paid work.

- Drive lifecycle and retention: own the email, push, and in-app lifecycle that turns first-time buyers into repeat collectors.

- Run programs, not vibes: manage our influencer, content, and other growth efforts as accountable performance programs that are briefed, tracked, attributed, and optimized.

- Own the numbers: build trustworthy growth analytics and attribution, read the funnel, and make every dollar of spend defensible.

- Juggle without dropping: keep paid, programs, lifecycle, and creative production all moving at once, on schedule and accountable.

A DAY IN YOUR LIFE AT RARE CANDY

You start in the dashboards. Yesterday's CAC ticked up on one channel, so you pull the creative that's fatiguing and queue two new hooks you briefed last week.

Midday, you sync with the Head of Growth on next month's spend plan, then brief an influencer program and set up the tracking so you'll actually know if it worked.

After lunch, you ship a lifecycle test aimed at second-purchase rate, check that a creative concept lands with the collector audience -- since you'd know if it didn't -- and close the day reconciling attribution so the weekly numbers tell the truth.

YOU MIGHT BE A FIT IF

- You've spent 4 to 7 years hands-on in performance marketing, with real spend and real numbers to back you up. We care far more about the CAC and ROAS you personally drove than your exact years or titles.

- You have proven experience marketing to consumer, niche-hobby, or gaming demographics. This is non-negotiable. You understand how to reach and convert passionate, culture-driven audiences. Deep trading-card or collector fluency is a strong plus.

- You're a performance creative as much as a marketer: you concept and ship the ad creative and hooks yourself, and you know which ones worked because you watched the numbers.

- You own lifecycle and retention, not just acquisition. You know growth is as much about the second purchase as the first.

- You're rigorous with data: attribution, funnels, and the discipline to keep spend efficient and defensible.

- You're an exceptional project and program manager. You run many workstreams at once, and nothing slips.

- You're scrappy and high-agency. You figure it out, ship the test, and don't wait to be handed a plan.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO THRIVE HERE

You'll be the person actually running growth, not directing others to do it, so this is a builder's…