Director, Marketplace Growth & Merchandising

Job Description

About Us

Propel is on a mission to empower low-income Americans by simplifying access to government benefits with modern technology. We're a passionate team of 100 Propellers – all working to help our users get through the month, every month. We launched the Propel Marketplace to connect our ~10M users to products, services, and exclusive offers from leading brands across grocery, healthcare, and financial services. It has grown into a powerful, industry-leading performance tool for our partners and a critical revenue driver for Propel.

The Role

As our first Director of Marketplace Growth & Merchandising, you will play a critical role in shaping the success of the Propel Marketplace. You will lead the development of ad placements, promotional strategies, and growth levers that drive both user engagement and partner performance. This is a high-impact, cross-functional role that requires strategic vision, analytical rigor, and a deep understanding of marketplace dynamics.  The ideal candidate is product-minded, hands-on, and is excited to balance partner revenue goals with delivering a great user experience. The role will report directly to the General Manager of Marketplace.

Here's how you'll impact the company:

• Own and enhance the ad placement and merchandising strategy that optimize user engagement, partner monetization, and overall Marketplace performance across the Propel app
• Develop campaign strategy in coordination with Marketing to create consistent and targeted user engagement patterns while also driving partner performance
• Own and manage ad inventory across app, email, push, and web, maintaining a robust inventory planning process that efficiently matches user engagement with monetization opportunities
• Develop an Offers and Rewards strategy to help make the Propel Marketplace the most rewarding destination for our users and to increase performance potential for our advertising partners
• Build scalable GTM process around placements and campaigns to ensure Business Development and Customer Success teams are equipped to efficiently price and proactively sell against our various growth levers
• Drive experimentation and leverage data-driven insights to optimize merchandising decisions and improve performance
• Identify, test, and scale new growth and monetization features and programs for Marketplace — leverage industry best practices combined with user-driven insights to help us rapidly scale the Marketplace
• Work cross-functionally with Product, Design, Customer Success, Marketing, and Data Science to align growth initiatives with user and partner needs
• Lead the Growth and Merchandising team – build and lead a lean and scrappy team that can drive cross functional efforts

Who You Are

• Analytical & data-driven – You can break down complex data to drive decisions and measure impact. You can work effectively with Data Science and Engineering to drive outcomes, stand up experimentation, and develop strategy
• Scrappy & entrepreneurial – You thrive in fast-moving environments and are comfortable rolling up your sleeves to execute
• Product-minded – You understand how to leverage product features to drive growth and monetization
• Collaborative & influential – You see problems from multiple perspectives and are able to proactively collaborate with Marketing, Product, Engineering, Design, and Data teams, influence others, and manage competing priorities 
• Strategic & user-focused – You can balance partner revenue goals with delivering a great user experience

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in merchandising, growth, product, analytics/strategy, or ad monetization within a marketplace, affiliate marketing, or ad tech environment.
• Experienced people manager with ability to hire and lead a scrappy and highly collaborative team
• Deep experience with growth strategies, performance marketing, and A/B testing
• Strong analytical skills, with experience using data to drive decision-making.  Ideal candidate is proficient in SQL and comfortable getting their hands dirty in data, while also being able to effectively collaborate with technical partners (Engineering and Data Science teams)
• Proven track record of launching and scaling monetization programs
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Marketing, and Sales teams
• Strong understanding of marketplace dynamics and user behavior

At Propel, you'll enjoy:

• Meaningful work and a strong shared sense of mission
• Remote-friendly work environment with a dog-friendly office in Downtown Brooklyn and satellite offices in San Francisco and Salt Lake City. The team meets in-person for optional retreats.
• 20 Days of PTO
• 4% 401K match
• $10k lifetime spend towards Carrot Fertility
• Excellent Medical, Dental and Vision options
• Other health and mental health focused benefits and perks 
• Propel builds compensation bands referencing the 75th percentile of compensation for companies like us. Expected compensation for the role as scoped is $200,000 – $240,000 and will be based on how a candidate matches to our internal leveling guide. Bands may be expanded if someone is leveled more senior than the role was initially scoped. A 10% bonus based on revenue performance, equity and excellent benefits come with this position as well!

Additional Considerations:

• We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team, and welcome applicants from all backgrounds and abilities.
• We're currently accepting applications from the states we have an established entity, which includes California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

More About Propel

We believe that Americans with limited income deserve modern, respectful, and effective experiences around their government benefits and money. Unfortunately, the status quo often fails to treat them as first-class citizens in their daily interactions around the social safety net and financial services. The tech industry hasn’t pulled its weight in solving the problems faced by low-income Americans.

Propel’s mission is to change that. We’ve built Providers, the single most popular app in the country built specifically for low-income Americans.Over 5 million families each month use Providers to seamlessly manage their government benefits (programs like SNAP, commonly known as food stamps) while saving and earning money. Providers has been recognized by the White House, featured on the front page of the NYTimes, and carries over 500,000 five star reviews. 

Propel is a for-profit, venture-backed start-up company that holds its social mission at its core. We’re proud to be supported by a blend of nonprofits, impact investors, and world-class investors, including the Robin Hood Foundation, Andreessen Horowitz, Nyca Partners, Financial Health Network, JPMorganChase, Kevin Durant, Serena Williams, and Nas. For us to build a self-sustaining and profitable business, we need to deeply understand our user’s needs and build multiple successful products addressing those needs. If this challenge appeals to you, we’d love to talk!