Marketing Lead

Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 25 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers, including 100% of the Fortune 50, and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

Handshake is rapidly building a new business that helps companies securely license high-quality, non-public operational data to leading AI labs. This data, from documents and presentations to CRM, financial, marketing, and workflow data, helps train more capable models and agents.

This is the founding marketing leadership role for the supply side of this marketplace. You will set the strategy, identify the audiences and channels that work, and build a repeatable path from first touch to pipeline and revenue. You will also execute the first campaigns yourself, working directly with our senior leadership team and across sales, operations, product, and legal.

We are looking for a forward-thinking, hands-on builder who can move easily between strategy and execution. You will have the support of Handshake’s broader marketing organization, with the autonomy to build a new growth engine from the ground up. As the business and GTM motion prove out, there may be an opportunity to shape and lead a dedicated marketing team.

• Own the marketing strategy, including segmentation, positioning, channel priorities, and investment decisions

• Build and optimize the funnel across paid, outbound, referral, partner, product, and lifecycle channels

• Measure results through qualified pipeline and revenue, continuously testing and shifting investment toward what works

• Launch the first campaigns, landing pages, nurture programs, messaging, and sales materials while creating playbooks others can scale

• A track record of building measurable acquisition funnels and converting performance data into improved outcomes

• Strong quantitative fluency — you can query your own data, build a funnel model, design a statistically sound test, and distinguish signal from noise

• Partner with SDR and sales leadership on targeting, qualification, enablement, and feedback from the market

• Develop distinct motions for high-velocity opportunities, strategic deals, and partner-led acquisition

• Establish the enrichment, intent, automation, attribution, and reporting systems needed to scale

• 7+ years in B2B growth, demand generation, or full-stack marketing, including recent experience personally executing campaigns and building acquisition systems.

• Built an acquisition motion from zero to one. You can explain what you built yourself, how you found the audience, which channels worked, and how the effort contributed to closed business.

• Strong command of funnel math and business economics. You can build a working forecast, explain stage-by-stage conversion and timing, and reconcile performance against the plan. You use upstream metrics to understand and improve the end outcome.

• The ability to work directly with data. You can query and analyze your own data using SQL, spreadsheets, and analytics tools, investigate unexpected results, and design experiments with a clear understanding of sample size and uncertainty.

• Practical fluency with modern growth tools, AI, and automation. You have personally implemented workflows across multiple systems and are comfortable working with APIs, webhooks, and low-code tools.

• Creative channel judgment. You have identified promising audiences, distribution partners, or acquisition channels beyond the standard playbook and turned them into measurable results.

• Strong messaging and conversion instincts. You can translate a complex offering into credible, compelling messaging for founders and business leaders, then carry that message through campaigns, creative, and the product experience.

• Experience working closely with SDR and sales teams, with shared accountability for qualification, deal progression, and closed business.

• Experience acquiring suppliers or partners for a marketplace

• Experience marketing to founders, SMBs, or privately held companies

• Built referral, channel, alliance, or ecosystem programs

• Experience with offerings that require education, trust, and multiple stakeholders to close

• Comfortable using lightweight scripting to connect tools or analyze data