Lifecycle Marketing Manger

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, and 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 Lifecycle Marketing Manager to build the programs that turn new developer signups into activated users and engaged enterprise opportunities. ABOUT THE ROLE We have two lifecycle motions moving at completely different speeds. A developer signs up, and within minutes either makes a successful API call or drifts away. An enterprise account can take months to move, involve a dozen people, and require sustained education across technical and business stakeholders. You own both as deliberately separate tracks. On the self-serve side, the work is activation: getting a new signup to their first successful API call, then building the habits and usage signals that indicate real intent. The best programs will feel more like useful product guidance than marketing. Anything generic will be ignored. On the enterprise side, you build the journeys that keep Exa credible through a long buying cycle: persona-based education, buying committee engagement, stalled opportunity reactivation, and the content paths that help an account move from interest to evaluation. You will also own the lifecycle side of our webinar program: audience strategy, promotion, segmentation, and follow-up. PMM, DevRel, founders, and other subject matter experts will shape the topic and host. You will make sure the right people attend and that interest turns into meaningful next steps. This is an AI-first role at an AI-first company. Personalization, drafting, journey QA, segmentation, and reporting should be AI-accelerated so one person can operate two strong lifecycle motions without creating a pile of manual work. This role is based in person at our San Francisco HQ. WHAT YOU'LL OWN SELF-SERVE ACTIVATION - Own the developer journey from signup to first successful API call, early repeat usage, and an agreed activation or PQL threshold. - Build product-triggered messaging, onboarding sequences, and interventions that recover stalled new users. - Partner closely with Product and Engineering on the broader onboarding experience while owning the lifecycle programs that support it. - Success is measured by signup-to-first-call conversion, early repeat usage, and the percentage of new users who reach activation or PQL thresholds. ENTERPRISE NURTURE - Own the long-cycle journeys for enterprise accounts. - Build education paths by persona, use case, and vertical. - Develop programs that engage the broader buying committee, support active evaluations, and bring dormant accounts or opportunities back into motion. - Success is measured by meaningful account engagement, buying committee coverage, dormant opportunities reactivated, and progression into qualified pipeline. LIFECYCLE SEGMENTATION AND ORCHESTRATION - Own who receives what, when, and why. - Build a clear segmentation strategy across developers, product-qualified accounts, enterprise buyers, active evaluations, and dormant prospects. - Use product behavior, account context, and buying stage to determine the right message and next step. - Own send governance so no one receives conflicting, repetitive, or irrelevant communication from Exa. EMAIL CRAFT AND PROGRAM QUALITY - Own what we send and how it reads. - Set the quality bar for lifecycle copy, subject lines, cadence, personalization, and calls to action. - Make sure every message earns the attention it asks for, especially when the audience is a developer. - Success is measured by program-level engagement, conversion, unsubscribe rates, and the absence of internal collisions. WEBINAR AUDIENCE AND CONVERSION - Own audience strategy, promotion, segmentation, and follow-up for webinars and virtual programs. - Partner with PMM, DevRel, founders, and other subject matter experts on topics and speakers. - Make sure the right accounts register, attend, and move into an appropriate next step after the event. - Success is measured by qualified attendance, target-account participation, meetings created, and post-event pipeline progression. EXPERIMENTATION AND REPORTING - Own the lifecycle testing roadmap and performance reporting. - Build a disciplined backlog of experiments across activation, timing, segmentation, messaging, and re-engagement. - Be clear about what was tested, what happened, and what changed as a result. - Marketing Operations owns the attribution model and source of truth. You own lifecycle performance within it and use the same numbers as the rest of the company. AI-FIRST EXECUTION - Design AI-powered workflows for drafting, personalization, audience research, journey QA, segmentation, and performance summaries. - Use AI to increase the quality and speed of the work, not to flood inboxes with more content. - If a step runs manually more than twice, you should be itching to automate it. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - New developer signups reach their first successful API call at a materially higher rate than they do today. - More new users reach repeat usage and product-qualified thresholds. - Enterprise accounts stay engaged through long buying cycles without being spammed. - Dormant accounts and opportunities are brought back into active conversations. - The self-serve and enterprise motions are genuinely distinct in content, cadence, audience, and tone. - Lifecycle segmentation reflects product behavior, account context, and buying stage. - Webinars consistently attract people from the accounts we care about and produce meaningful follow-up. - Every send has a clear purpose, and stale programs get retired rather than accumulating. - Lifecycle performance is visible, trusted, and reviewed regularly with Marketing, Product, Sales, and Marketing Operations. WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT OWN - Post-sale onboarding, customer adoption, and expansion: Customer Success, Product, and Account Management own the customer lifecycle after purchase. This role may support relevant communications but is not the primary owner. - Marketing automation platform, data model, deliverability infrastructure, lead scoring, and attribution: Marketing Operations owns the plumbing. You own the programs built on top of it. - Paid channels, website, and landing page infrastructure: Digital Marketing. - Technical content substance, benchmarks, and organic discovery: Technical PMM for Content. - In-product onboarding UI and product experiences: Product and Engineering. You will partner closely with them. - Webinar production logistics and speaker content: PMM, DevRel, and the relevant subject matter experts. You own audience strategy, promotion, and follow-up. - Field events and regional programs: Field Marketing and Field Events. - Sales sequences and outbound prospecting cadences: Sales and RevOps. WHO YOU ARE - 5+ years in lifecycle, growth, email, or marketing automation at a B2B technology company, with hands-on ownership of programs you built and measured yourself. - Experience building both a self-serve product-led motion and an enterprise nurture motion, with a clear understanding of why they require different approaches. - Deep craft in email. Show us sequences you wrote and be ready to explain the reasoning behind the audience, subject line, length, cadence, and call to action. - Experience using product behavior and account signals to trigger and personalize lifecycle programs. - Credibility with a developer audience. You understand why most marketing email fails with engineers and can write something they will actually read. - A track record of improving activation, engagement, pipeline progression, or reactivation through programs you personally owned. - Experience supporting webinars or virtual programs through audience strategy, promotion, segmentation, and post-event conversion. - Experimentation discipline. You have run real tests, written honest readouts, and changed programs based on what the results showed. - Analytics fluency. You can build your own reporting, investigate performance, and tell the difference between a lift and a coincidence. - Working knowledge of deliverability fundamentals, consent, preference management, and list hygiene, enough to partner well with Marketing Operations. - A proven AI builder mindset. You have shipped automations and workflows using LLMs and other tools, not just used ChatGPT to write copy. NICE TO HAVE - Experience at an API-first or developer tools company with a free tier. - Fluency with product analytics and event-triggered messaging based on usage data. - Experience building PQL programs and partnering with Sales on product-led pipeline. - SQL or comfort pulling and validating your own segments. - Experience with enterprise buying committees and account-based nurture. - Experience with webinar or virtual event platforms at scale. - Familiarity with hybrid PQL and MQL models and how lifecycle programs support both. - Experience working in a high-growth environment where the processes and programs still need to be built. 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.