Director, Paid Media & Growth

About the Role

At Bluevine, our Marketing team is building a high-performance engine to attract, engage, and grow relationships with small business owners. Through data-driven marketing and creative storytelling, we show owners how Bluevine can help manage their finances and grow their businesses.

We are looking for a Director of Paid Media & Growth to lead our complete paid media portfolio and shape how we invest across performance and brand marketing to drive durable growth. Reporting to the Head of Marketing and serving as one of our team's senior leaders, you will own paid media strategy, investment, experimentation, measurement, and creative strategy across channels.

Your primary mandate will be to acquire Checking and Lending customers at sustainable acquisition costs. Success in this role requires a proactive, autonomous leader and exceptional problem solver who can identify the true drivers of growth, prioritize the highest-impact opportunities, and translate insights into focused action.  You will also play a key role in building an AI-native marketing organization, using AI and automation to improve how we work, make decisions, and drive growth.

What You'll Do

• Own full-funnel paid marketing strategy and results across paid search, paid social, connected TV, online video, podcasts, streaming audio, display, out of home, and emerging channels.
• Build and lead a high-performing paid media and marketing analytics team with clear ownership, high standards, and a culture of accountability.  
• Set the long-term vision for Bluevine's paid marketing function, proactively identifying the highest-impact opportunities and the capabilities required to pursue them. Build the team and secure the resources needed to bring that vision to life.
• Manage paid media as an integrated investment portfolio across demand generation and demand capture. Set channel strategies and targets, evaluate marginal returns, and adjust plans as evidence or business conditions change.
• Diagnose the underlying drivers of performance and growth, and turn insights from campaigns, data, and customer behavior into clear, actionable growth strategies.
• Establish experimentation and measurement plans spanning attribution, incrementality, geo testing, media mix modeling, brand lift, funnel analysis, and downstream customer quality. 
• Own paid creative testing strategy in close partnership with Brand, Creative, Web, and Content, building clear briefs, learning agendas, and feedback loops across brand and performance programs.
• Strengthen the operating model across internal teams, agencies, platforms, and partners by determining which capabilities to build internally and where to leverage external expertise, and by exploring opportunities to streamline processes through AI and automation. 
• Develop the strategy and organizational roadmap for new or emerging channels, including influencers, marketing partnerships, sponsored placements, AI ads, and other opportunities to create or capture demand.
• Serve as a senior strategic partner within Marketing and cross-functionally with Business Operations, Finance, Product, Data Science, and Legal. Communicate evidence and tradeoffs clearly and help solve growth opportunities beyond the paid media function.

What We Look For

• 12 years of experience in paid media, growth marketing, or performance marketing, including at least three years leading and developing teams. You set clear direction, operate proactively and autonomously, and build a culture of ownership, accountability, and sound judgment. 
• Deep paid media expertise across performance marketing and brand media channels, including paid search, paid social, CTV, online video, audio, podcasts, display, and out of home. Direct mail experience is a plus.
• A full-funnel growth mindset, with the ability to balance investment between demand generation and demand capture  to drive efficient, durable growth.
• A problem solver who brings structure to ambiguous challenges, forms testable hypotheses, and translates evidence into clear, actionable recommendations.
• An AI-native operator who uses emerging tools to accelerate analysis, improve workflows and campaign processes, and increase the speed and quality of team output.
• Strong command of growth economics and media measurement, with experience managing substantial, multi-channel budgets and applying CAC, LTV, marginal returns, attribution, incrementality, and media mix modeling to investment decisions.
• Experience optimizing media in a business where lead quality can be evaluated objectively through downstream outcomes such as activation, revenue, or LTV.
• Strong creative judgment and the ability to connect media strategy with messaging, formats, audiences, offers, and customer journeys.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience partnering across Creative, Product, Risk, Finance, Data Science, Business Operations, and Legal.
• Experience in fintech, financial services, or another regulated category is preferred but not required.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience preferred; an MBA or advanced quantitative or technical degree is a plus.
• A strong connection to Bluevine's mission of empowering small businesses.