Digital Marketing Manager

Job description

About Exa We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion. Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders & dropouts alike. We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right. We are looking for a Digital Marketing Manager to own the channels and surfaces where developers find us and decide to sign up. ABOUT THE ROLE This is a full-stack growth role. You own paid acquisition, the website and its conversion path, and the technical mechanics of search and answer-engine visibility. You need to be genuinely hands-on in all of them rather than a manager of agencies. Developers can be cynical about marketing, allergic to gated content, and they evaluate by trying the product. So the job is less about clever campaigns and more about removing friction: fast load-times, a signup flow that gets someone to their first API success, and spend that goes where developers are. You will work closely with Technical PMM, who owns the content narrative, while you own the surfaces and channels that distribute it. You'll also work with Marketing Ops, who owns the tech-stack and attribution method, while you own channel performance. This is an AI-first role at an AI-first company. Creative production, landing page velocity, and reporting should be AI-accelerated so that one person can run three functions. This role is based in-person at our San Francisco HQ. WHAT YOU'LL OWN PAID ACQUISITION Own paid channels end to end: search, social, developer-native placements (newsletters, podcasts, communities, sponsorships), budget allocation, creative testing, and channel mix. Success is measured by qualified signups and pipeline per dollar, with an honest view of incrementality. WEBSITE AND CONVERSION Own the marketing site as a conversion surface: landing pages, page speed, messaging tests, and the path from first visit to signup. Success is measured by conversion rate improvements you can defend and by shipping velocity on new pages. SEARCH AND ANSWER ENGINE MECHANICS Own the technical side of organic visibility: site architecture, crawlability, schema and structured data, page performance, and the tooling that monitors it. You can collaborate with Technical PMM to identify and pursue target keywords. SELF-SERVE FUNNEL GROWTH Own the top of the self-serve funnel through to activation handoff: signup flow experiments, friction removal, and the instrumentation to see where developers drop. Success is measured by signup-to-first-call conversion. CHANNEL REPORTING AND EXPERIMENTATION Own channel-level reporting, the experiment backlog, and the discipline of running tests that produce decisions. Marketing Ops owns the attribution model and the source of truth; you own performance within it and you use the same numbers everyone else does. AI-FIRST EXECUTION Design and deploy AI-powered workflows for creative variants, page builds, keyword and audience research, and reporting. If a step runs manually more than twice, you should be itching to automate it. WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT OWN - Technical content, benchmarks, and the organic narrative: Technical PMM for Content. - Marketing tech stack, data model, and attribution methodology: Marketing Operations is primary, but you can influence of course. - Email, nurture, and webinars: that’s Lifecycle Marketing. - Events and field programs: Field Marketing and Field Events. - Product onboarding beyond the marketing funnel handoff: Product and Engineering. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Qualified signups grow while keeping CAC in range, and you can show which channels are incremental. - New landing pages ship in days. - The site is technically clean: fast, crawlable, structured, and monitored. - Signup-to-first-API-call conversion improves through experiments you ran. - You and Technical PMM operate together on organic. - Spend decisions are made weekly from data, and losing channels get cut. WHO YOU ARE - 4+ years in growth, digital, or performance marketing at a B2B technology company, with hands-on ownership of paid budgets, landing pages, and technical SEO. Not agency oversight, hands on keyboard. - Deep craft in at least one of the three areas and real working competence in the other two. Tell us which is your strongest and be ready to prove it. - Credibility marketing to developers: you understand why gated whitepapers fail with this audience and what works instead. - A track record of experiments that changed a number, with the honesty to tell us which ones failed. - Analytics fluency: you can build your own reporting, and you know the difference between a lift and a coincidence. - Comfort in the build layer. You can ship a landing page yourself, read the console, and work in whatever the site is built on rather than waiting on engineering. - A proven AI builder mindset: you've shipped automations and creative pipelines using LLMs, not just used ChatGPT. NICE TO HAVE - Experience at a PLG or self-serve developer product with a free tier. - SQL and comfort querying a warehouse directly. - Experience with developer-native paid channels and sponsorship buying. - Hands-on with the modern web stack (Next.js, Webflow, or similar) and CRO tooling. - Early experience with AI answer visibility and how it differs from classic SEO. BENEFITS - Health and wellness: Premium medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus a monthly wellness benefit and a monthly commuter benefit for our SF team. - Fertility and family planning: Reimbursement for eligible egg freezing and related medical expenses up to a $15,000 lifetime maximum, plus 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, whether through birth, adoption, surrogacy, or foster placement. - Life at Exa: Lunch and dinner served daily, an office stocked with snacks, coffee, and health supplements, fresh bread from a local bakery every morning, weekly milk tea deliveries, monthly picnics, and parties to celebrate the wins (and each other). - Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and welcome applicants from all backgrounds and locations. Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.