Director, Product Marketing

Job description

ABOUT CARDLESS Cardless is a Series C consumer fintech that uses AI to make it easy for the world's largest brands to build credit cards into their ecosystems. Think Shopify, but for credit cards. Brands use Cardless to configure, launch, and grow credit card programs that delight their customers and strengthen their core business. Customers include Coinbase, Bilt Rewards, Alibaba, Qatar Airways, and LATAM Airlines. Cardless powers cards on all three major networks (Visa, Mastercard, and American Express) and uses agentic servicing to operate at a fraction of the headcount and cost that traditional card issuers require. The company has scaled from $10 million to $150 million in run rate revenue in the past 12 months. Cardless raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital in September 2025, bringing total funding past $170 million. The team is past 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026. ABOUT THE ROLE Cardless operates at the intersection of financial infrastructure, brand partnerships, and capital markets — and the distance between what the market thinks of Cardless and what we actually do is where growth either accelerates or stalls. This role exists to close that gap. Cardless is hiring its first product marketing hire — a senior, hands-on PMM who will define how we talk about ourselves in the market and build the narrative our business team uses to land our newest customers. This is a hybrid role by design: you'll own brand narrative and positioning (including our website), have the freedom to start investing in blogging, social channels, and other forms of thought leadership, and you'll own our sales collateral (decks, one-pagers, case studies, battlecards). Those two things should come from the same person and the same story, especially at this stage. We're a B2B2C business: we sell to enterprise partners (brands, banks, or programs), and those partners in turn put a card in front of their own consumers. You'll need to be comfortable positioning for both audiences — the enterprise buyer evaluating a platform, and the eventual cardholder experience that buyer is signing up for. You won't be doing this alone on execution — we'll support you with contract design/web resources for production work — but you own the strategy, the words, and the through-line from website to sales deck. WHAT YOU WILL DO Define Market Positioning - Define and continually sharpen how Cardless is positioned against competitors and alternatives (in-house programs, legacy processors, other co-brand platforms) — not a static one-pager, but a narrative you keep pressure-testing against the market. - Translate that positioning into language that works for two audiences at once: the enterprise partner evaluating a platform, and the consumer who eventually carries the card. - Track competitors and adjacent players — what they claim, what they actually ship, and where Cardless has a genuine edge — and keep leadership current on it. - Bring an outside-in view into internal roadmap conversations, grounded in what's actually resonating — or not — with partners and prospects. Own the Website and Brand Narrative - Own content strategy, structure, and copy for cardless.com http://cardless.com, keeping it current with new launches, partnerships, and proof points. - Direct design and engineering resources to execute changes — you set the narrative and the bar, you don't need to build the page yourself. - Make sure every public-facing surface — website, decks, one-pagers — tells the same consistent story, instead of three different versions of what Cardless does. - Treat the website as a living asset, not a one-time project — revisit and rewrite it as the product and market change, not once a year. Build the Sales Toolkit - Build and maintain the core sales collateral — pitch decks, one-pagers, case studies, competitive battlecards, RFP boilerplate — that the Business team actually uses in real conversations. - Work in tight partnership with Business leadership to learn what's winning and losing deals, and rebuild collateral accordingly rather than treating it as finished once it ships. - Turn live partner wins — Coinbase, Bilt, and whoever's next — into case studies and proof points that make the next pitch more credible. - Make sure collateral reflects what Cardless actually does and where it's going, not what shipped two product cycles ago. Drive Launches and External Content - Plan and execute go-to-market for new products, features, and brand partnerships — including press, content, and equipping sales to sell it. - Drive external content that reinforces positioning: blog posts, case studies, LinkedIn messaging, and work with our PR lead on speaking opportunities as they arise. - Prioritize and sequence launches so the market hears about the right things at the right time, rather than everything landing at once or nothing landing at all. - Direct contract designers and agencies on graphics and creative assets — setting direction and holding the quality bar, without needing to be the one designing. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR Experience - 5–8+ years in product marketing, with real ownership of positioning and messaging at a B2B or B2B2C company. Fintech, payments, or card issuing experience is a strong plus. - A track record of owning both a company website and the sales collateral built from the same narrative — not just one or the other. - Strong writer who can translate a complex financial/technical product into a clear story for enterprise buyers, and a separate but consistent story for consumer-facing card marketing. - A builder, not just a strategist — this is a hands-on IC role at a company with no existing PMM function. You'll write the deck yourself, not just brief someone to. - Experience working directly and iteratively with sales/partnerships teams — collateral gets built and rebuilt based on what happens in real deals. - Comfortable directing outside design/creative resources to get production-quality output without needing to be the one designing. Skills and Competencies - Narrative and Positioning Craft: You can take a complex financial product and find the story that makes it obviously compelling — not generic marketing language, but a sharp, defensible point of view on why Cardless wins. - Two-Audience Fluency (B2B2C): You can shift fluidly between speaking to an enterprise partner's executive team and thinking through how their own consumers will experience a card — most PMMs have only ever had to do one of these. - Writing: You write clearly and persuasively in your own voice, without needing a copywriter to make your ideas land. Decks, web copy, one-pagers — you write the first draft yourself, and it's good. - Sales Partnership: You spend real time in the room with Business Development and Account Management, not just downstream of them — you know what's actually landing in live conversations and rebuild collateral around it. - Design Direction, Not Design Execution: You have a strong eye and can direct a contractor or agency to a polished result, even though you're not the one in Figma. - Judgment and Autonomy: This is a first PMM hire — there's no playbook waiting for you. You can prioritize across positioning, website, and collateral without someone telling you what to work on first. THIS ROLE IS NOT A FIT IF - You want to inherit a built-out marketing team and process — this is a from-scratch, first-hire role, and you're building the function as you go. - You want to specialize in only one of positioning or collateral — this role is deliberately both, and the two are meant to reinforce each other. - You need a design or content team to execute your ideas before you can move — you'll be directing contractors yourself and getting your hands dirty on production. - You're more energized by big-budget brand campaigns than by rebuilding a one-pager for the third time this month because it's not landing with customers. - You want to speak to only consumers or only enterprise buyers — this role requires being genuinely fluent in both, at the same time, every day. WHY THIS ROLE Cardless is at the kind of inflection point that produces the best operator roles: a company that has found product-market fit, raised the capital to scale, and now faces a specific and solvable problem — the distance between what the market is asking for and what the product team is building needs to shrink, fast. The strongest talent in the market is going to AI labs or starting companies. Cardless recruits from the band in between: operators who are not certain about their next move but know they want meaningful impact and the opportunity to do the best work of their careers. If that description fits you, this is the role. COMPENSATION This role has an annual starting salary range of $175,000–$220,000 + equity + benefits. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location. BENEFITS We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits: 💸 Meaningful Start-up equity 🏥 100% health, vision & dental primary coverage ➕ 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage 🍱 Catered lunches 🚎 $250/month Commuter benefit 👶 Parental leave ✈️ Team building events & happy hours 🌴 Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year 🖥️ Apple equipment 💸 401k plan LOCATION We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. This role is in-office 5 days a week.