Head of Growth

4

4am Media

Head of Growth

San Diego, CA
Full Time
Paid
  • Responsibilities

    4AM Media owns and operates 3 DTC brands across health, cleaning, and pets. We're full-stack brand builders — supply chain, creative, custom funnels, media buying, analytics, retention, and customer service all happen under one roof.

    Last year we spent over $40M across paid media scaling our own products. No clients. No middlemen. No agency politics. Just our brands, our P&L, and a small but mighty team of 20 that ships fast.

    We're looking for a Head of Growth to own the entire growth function across all three brands and report directly to the CEO. This is a leadership role with full team performance and P&L ownership. You'll lead a team of channel leads and operators across paid acquisition, creative, retention, marketplaces, and affiliate — and you'll fill the dev team's backlog.

    This is a player-coach role, but the emphasis is on coach. We need someone who knows when to step in and run a campaign themselves, and when to step back and develop the lead who should be running it. Someone who can sit in a 1:1 with a media buyer in the morning, brief the creative manager at lunch, present numbers to the CEO in the afternoon, and write the dev brief that night — and do all of it well.

    Who reports to you

    • 5 media buyers (running Meta, Google, AppLovin, Native, CTV across the brands)
    • Creative manager (with their team of 4: 2 graphic designers, 2 video editors, plus pending hires)
    • Marketplace lead (Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart)
    • Email/retention lead
    • Ecommerce marketing manager
    • Affiliate lead

    You'll also fill the dev team's backlog — roughly 80% of what they ship will come from your priorities.

    What you'll own

    Paid acquisition (the main priority)

    This is the core of the role and where the biggest dollars and biggest leverage live. You own:

    • Strategy and budget allocation across Meta, Google (Search, Display, Shopping, Demand Gen), AppLovin, Native, Affiliate, and CTV
    • Performance accountability for the buyer team — hitting daily/weekly/monthly spend, MER, and contribution margin targets across all three brands
    • Attribution methodology. You decide how we measure (Northbeam, in-platform, MixPanel) and you own the trust the company has in those numbers. When the CEO asks "is this brand profitable," your answer is the answer
    • MER ownership. Brand MER and blended MER targets are yours to set and yours to defend. You know when to push for scale and when to pull back
    • New product launches. You build the launch playbook, set the test budget, decide the channels, and call go/no-go on whether a product gets sustained spend
    • Split testing pipeline. Creative tests, audience tests, LP tests, offer tests, funnel tests. You generate the ideas and push them forward to testing and roll-out
    • New funnel architecture. When a brand needs a new pre-sell, advertorial, quiz, VSL, or checkout flow, you scope it, brief it, and ship it with the dev and creative teams
    • New offer development. Pricing, bundles, free shipping thresholds, BOGO, subscription incentives, intro offers — you test and decide what works
    • New channel R &D. When we test a new traffic source, you're the one prototyping it first. Hands on keyboard. Then you hand it to the right buyer once it's working

    Retention and lifecycle

    You manage the email lead. You understand how LTV, repeat purchase rate, and subscription metrics flow into your acquisition targets — when retention strengthens, your CAC ceiling rises and your MER target loosens.

    Marketplaces

    You manage the marketplace lead. You decide where we expand, where we double down, and where we pull out — Amazon, TikTok Shop, and beyond.

    Affiliate

    You manage the affiliate lead. You set the targets, approve the partner mix, and own the channel's contribution to overall growth.

    Creative direction

    The creative manager and their team of 4 report to you. You set the testing roadmap, the brief quality bar, and the velocity. Most growth leaders' biggest bottleneck is creative — yours won't be, but only if you push it.

    Dev priorities

    You fill ~80% of the dev team's backlog — checkout optimizations, LP infrastructure, attribution improvements, internal tooling. You'll need to know what to ask for and how to write a brief that gets it built right.

    What we need you to bring

    • 7+ years in performance marketing or growth roles, with experience at $100M+ scale
    • You've been the buyer. Not just managed buyers. You've spent $50k+/day on Meta or Google with your own hands and you can still get hands-on when the team needs it
    • You're a builder of teams, not just a manager of them. You've hired, developed, and promoted operators. You know how to give feedback that actually changes behavior. You know when to coach and when to step in
    • DTC ecommerce native. You think in contribution margin, MER, blended CAC, payback period, and 90-day LTV — and you've made real decisions based on those numbers, not just ROAS
    • Multi-channel fluency. Meta and Google are table stakes. You've meaningfully scaled at least 2 of: AppLovin, Native, Affiliate, CTV, TikTok Shop, Amazon
    • Funnel and offer intuition. You don't just buy traffic — you have strong opinions about where it lands, what it sells, and how the offer is structured. You've built or rebuilt funnels that materially moved conversion rate
    • Attribution maturity. You've worked with Northbeam, Triple Whale, or similar tools and you can articulate the limitations of each. You don't blindly trust a single source of truth
    • Strong communicator, both directions. You can present to the CEO with sharp numbers and a clear point of view. You can also sit with a junior buyer and unblock them without making them feel small. Both matter
    • Operator energy. You move fast, you ship, you don't wait for permission, and you don't need a deck to make a decision

    Why this role is different

    • You work directly with the CEO to execute against our monthly, quarterly, and year-long priorities
    • You're in the weeds. This is a player-coach role with the emphasis on player when it counts. You're not just setting strategy — you're prototyping the next channel, briefing the next funnel, and stepping in when a buyer needs help. The team will only move as fast as you do
    • P &L leadership, with room to grow into more. You'll start by owning revenue, MER, and opex targets for the growth function. Over time, you'll work directly with the CEO and finance team to learn the full business — P&L, balance sheet, cash flow — and take on more
    • Real team to lead. 10+ direct or indirect reports across every growth function. This isn't a role where you're the only one doing the work — it's a role where your job is to make the team better while still being one of the best operators in the building
    • Real budget, no approval theater. We trust the people we hire. If you want to test a new channel, hire a new buyer, build a new funnel, or 10x a winning ad's budget, ship it
    • Full control of the stack. Channel leads report to you. Creative team reports to you. The dev team's backlog is yours to fill. The only person you have to convince is the CEO, and the answer is usually yes
    • Real growth path. Master the growth function first. From there, the path expands into finance, supply chain, and operations — and potentially to becoming a partner in the business

    Why San Diego, why in-office

    The majority of our growth team is in San Diego because the speed advantage of being in the room together is real — and as the leader of that team, your presence sets the pace. This is an in-office role. We need you in the building, every day, with the team you lead.

    What success looks like in 12 months

    • You've taken our blended MER and pushed it materially in the right direction without sacrificing scale
    • Every channel lead reporting to you is performing at or above target, and at least one has been developed into a stronger operator than when you inherited them
    • At least one new traffic source you R&D'd is now a meaningful channel for the company
    • Our creative testing throughput has at least doubled and the team is briefing better than they were when you started
    • Retention metrics on at least one brand have moved measurably — we're less dependent on cold acquisition than we were
    • You've launched at least one new product that scaled profitably and at least one new funnel architecture that became a category-defining bet
    • The CEO trusts the numbers you bring to the table and the recommendations you make — you've earned that through clear communication and consistent results
    • We're looking at one of two things: expanded product portfolio under your leadership, or bringing you in as a partner in the business