Ello

Performance Marketing Lead

San Francisco, CA (On-site)

Our mission at Ello is simple and urgent: Maximize the potential of every child, everywhere. We’re building the world’s first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators. Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories using generative AI. It works—and kids love it. Now, we’re scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher for all children. We’re building a real-time learning platform—one that combines language, speech, and memory to power personalized, interactive education for kids worldwide. We’re moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids and families, and push the boundaries of what AI can do in education. With the resources of the world's top investors and the heart of a public benefit corporation, we’re here to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIME’s Best Inventions and Fortune’s Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education. About the Role We're hiring a Performance Marketing Lead to lead and scale Ello's paid growth engine during a pivotal moment in our company's trajectory. This role is ideal for a strategic marketing leader who has successfully managed agency relationships, built measurement infrastructure from the ground up, and driven meaningful growth at consumer tech companies. You'll own the full performance marketing strategy—from agency management and creative testing to conversion optimization and attribution—while partnering closely with product, creative, and analytics teams to maximize ROI and accelerate our path to scale. As we scale from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of learners, you'll have the opportunity to shape our growth playbook, build systems that will drive millions in efficient revenue, and prove out channels and strategies that can fundamentally change how families discover personalized AI education. What You’ll Own Paid Media Strategy & Agency Management: Strategic oversight of all paid media channels (Meta, TikTok, Google, emerging platforms) including agency selection, management, and performance accountability Conversion Rate Optimization: Build and lead our CRO program—identifying high-impact opportunities across the user journey, designing and executing tests, and driving systematic improvements to conversion rates Attribution & Analytics Infrastructure: Own attribution modeling, measurement systems, and analytics frameworks to ensure clean data and accurate ROI measurement across all channels Performance Creative Partnership: Partner with creative teams to develop performance creative strategies, establish testing frameworks, and iterate based on data-driven insights Email & Lifecycle Marketing: Drive email and lifecycle marketing strategy in collaboration with product and growth teams to optimize the full customer journey Budget & Performance Management: Plan, forecast, and report on a multi-million dollar annual budget with clear accountability for efficiency metrics and growth targets Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner with product, engineering, analytics, and creative teams to drive growth initiatives that require coordination across the organization Who You Are Strategic thinker with strong operational execution: you can develop comprehensive growth strategies while rolling up your sleeves to implement and optimize Data-driven decision maker with strong analytical skills and experience building measurement systems from scratch Expert in agency management: you've successfully evaluated, hired, and managed external partners to deliver exceptional results Collaborative leader who energizes cross-functional teams and influences without authority to drive company-wide initiatives Passionate about education, children, and mission-driven work—you're excited to apply your growth expertise to something that truly matters Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration in a fast-moving startup environment Requirements 3-7+ years of performance or growth marketing experience, with demonstrated progression in scope and impact Proven track record managing agency relationships and achieving strong ROI across multiple paid channels Deep experience with conversion rate optimization: from identifying opportunities to designing experiments to driving measurable improvements Strong understanding of attribution modeling, analytics platforms (e.g., GA4, Amplitude, Mixpanel), and marketing measurement frameworks Experience at consumer-focused, growth-stage tech companies (Series A-C preferred) Exceptional communication skills with ability to present complex data insights to executive stakeholders About Ello Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We’re currently around 48 people, headquartered in San Francisco with another office in Nairobi, Kenya. Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator’s W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors, including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures. We’re a small, collaborative team that takes each other’s voices seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, our team must be representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies with the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We don’t take it for granted, so we work urgently to turn that vision into reality. We want to create an environment where we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things we’re proud of – and we believe it’s possible to do both.