Traffic (User Acquisition) Team Lead

About ScholarshipOwl

ScholarshipOwl is the largest scholarship marketplace in the U.S., connecting over 14 million Gen Z students with private scholarships — and the brands that power them. Our mission is to make education financing more accessible and engaging, while giving brands a way to connect with the next generation.

We’re powered by AI technology that simplifies scholarship discovery, streamlines the application process, and delivers measurable results for both students and partners. Whether it’s helping students secure funding or enabling brands to run impactful campaigns, we’re reshaping how education is funded — and discovered.

The Role

We are seeking an analytical, hands-on Traffic Team Lead / User Acquisition Team Lead to take full ownership of scaling user acquisition across paid (PPC) and partner (Affiliate) channels. In this player-coach role, you will manage, develop, and coach a dedicated team of PPC and Affiliate Managers while maintaining direct involvement in campaign mechanics, tracking architecture, and partner economics.

Your role is to elevate the profitability, scalability, and predictability of our multi-channel traffic acquisition. If you are an experienced performance marketer who loves diving deep into funnel economics, diagnosing attribution leaks, catching traffic fraud, and mentoring high-output teams, this role is built for you.

What You’ll Do

• Team Leadership & Coaching: Act as a hands-on "player-coach," mentoring the Affiliate and PPC team while setting clear KPIs, testing roadmaps, and accountability standards.

• Team Development: Conduct structured performance reviews with each team member and ensure clear ownership of priorities and deliverables.

• Stakeholder Communication: Update adjacent team leads and relevant stakeholders on performance, risks, opportunities, and changes to projections.

• Budget & Strategy Ownership: Manage and dynamically allocate multi-channel acquisition budgets across PPC and Affiliate networks based on real-time CAC, ROAS, and LTV.

• Channel Optimization: Guide the team's daily execution—from PPC bidding and creative testing to negotiating high-leverage affiliate deals and scaling new traffic sources.

• Unit Economics & Forecasting: Own the math behind customer acquisition, monitoring full-funnel conversion rates, payback periods, and delivering accurate weekly forecasts.

• Data Integrity & Fraud Triage: Maintain strict attribution accuracy across tracking platforms (GA4, Mixpanel, TUNE, etc.) and aggressively eliminate click fraud, bot traffic, and budget waste.

Must-Haves

Experience & Leadership Baseline

• Relevant Experience: 3+ years of professional performance marketing / user acquisition experience, with at least 1+ year in a hands-on PPC role, 1+ year in hands-on affiliate management, and 1+ year managing or leading a growth/traffic team.

• Player-Coach Mentality: Proven ability to balance strategic leadership, team communication, and coaching with direct execution—pulling reports, analyzing campaign mechanics, and troubleshooting ad accounts alongside your team.

• Budget Management: Demonstrated track record managing meaningful acquisition budgets and making disciplined, performance-based capital allocation decisions.

Channel & Commercial Mastery

• PPC Execution: Strong working knowledge of PPC campaign management, keyword bidding, creative testing, and paid media optimization.

• Commercial Acumen & Affiliate Strategy: Deep understanding of partner economics, how to structure commercially attractive deals, and broad awareness of major players and developments across the UA ecosystem.

Economics, Analytics & Traffic Quality

• Acquisition Economics: In-depth understanding of full-funnel performance metrics, including CAC/CPA, conversion rates, payback periods, ROAS, and LTV.

• Traffic Quality & Fraud Mitigation: Demonstrated ability to evaluate traffic quality and actively diagnose issues such as click fraud, attribution hijacking, bot traffic, poor targeting, or low-intent sources.

• Tracking & Analytics Tooling: Hands-on experience with affiliate tracking and traffic-management platforms (e.g., TUNE, Affise, Everflow) and product analytics tools (e.g., Mixpanel, GA4).

• Quantitative Investigation: Strong analytical and quantitative foundation, with the ability to independently query data, segment performance, uncover hidden patterns, and identify incremental growth opportunities.

Behavioral Traits & Working Style

• Communication & Transparency: Clear, direct communication style with the ability to simplify complex data, while remaining completely transparent and honest when performance misses targets.

• Analytical Temperament: Composed, objective demeanor during unexpected performance drops, combined with a natural curiosity to dig beneath surface-level explanations.

• Strategic Prioritization: Intellectual humility to challenge existing assumptions (including your own) and the operational discipline to cut low-value or unprofitable initiatives early.

Nice-to-Haves

Advanced Technical & Data Skills

• Proficiency in writing SQL queries to pull, aggregate, and analyze raw data independently.

• Basic programming or scripting experience to automate repetitive workflows.

• Hands-on experience building custom dashboards or automated reporting solutions.

• Strong familiarity with multi-touch attribution models and structured experimentation frameworks.

• Experience deploying modern AI prospecting, research, and workflow tools (e.g., Clay, automated web scrapers, LLMs for copy/data analysis).

Channel Scaling & Zero-to-One Growth

• Track record of managing PPC and affiliate acquisition simultaneously while scaling a user acquisition function.

• Experience discovering, validating, and scaling brand-new acquisition channels or traffic sources from scratch.

Industry Background, Network & Education

• Direct industry experience within EdTech, freemium subscription models, lead generation, or Gen Z-focused consumer marketplaces.

• An active personal network of affiliate partners, traffic brokers, and direct publishers.

• Proven history of attending relevant industry conferences and converting them into commercial partnerships.

• Degree or professional qualification in Marketing, Business, Economics, Statistics, Data, or a related field (hands-on track record prioritized over formal education).

Why Join ScholarshipOwl?

• Mission-Driven Work: Build technology that helps students unlock education opportunities and reduce financial barriers.

• Fully Remote: Work from anywhere in the world while collaborating with a global team.

• High Impact & Ownership: You aren't just a cog in a machine; you own your domain and directly drive results.

• Unlimited PTO: We value outcomes over hours worked and trust you to manage your time.

• Computer Upgrade Budget: Up to $1,600 to invest in your ideal primary work computer.

• Workspace Upgrade Program: Up to $800 to set up your home office.

• Monthly Coworking Allowance: $200/month to rent desks or workspace passes whenever you want a change of scenery.

• Owl Shine Program: Monthly employee recognition and awards celebrating extraordinary contributions.

• Continuous Learning Culture: Dedicated support for curiosity, bold experimentation, and career growth.

• Annual Global Off-sites: Connect with your teammates in person at exciting locations around the world.