Senior Customer Marketing Manager, Startups
Location: San Francisco, CA preferred; New York, NY may also be considered
Schedule: Hybrid, with 2–3 days per week onsite
Contract: 9-month W2 contract
Pay Rate: $140–$160 per hour
Travel: Must be willing and able to travel as needed for customer events, activations, and industry engagements
Russell Tobin is supporting a leading artificial intelligence company in hiring a Senior Customer Marketing Manager, Startups. This role will help shape how the organization builds, nurtures, and expands relationships with high-growth startup customers—from early adoption and initial success through long-term advocacy.
This is not a traditional customer marketing position focused primarily on producing case studies. The Senior Customer Marketing Manager will work at the intersection of Startup Partnerships, Sales, and Marketing to identify innovative, fast-growing companies building with advanced AI technology and transform their momentum into stories, programs, and experiences that capture market attention.
The ideal candidate is a creative, non-traditional marketer who can combine strong storytelling with strategic program development. You will work closely with founders and executive teams, create high-impact co-marketing opportunities, and develop customer programs that increase engagement, advocacy, retention, and brand affinity.
What You’ll Do
- Develop a deep understanding of startup customers, including their products, use cases, growth trajectories, and business priorities, to determine where marketing investment will have the greatest impact.
- Build and manage a portfolio of high-touch customer partnerships while also developing scalable, one-to-many programs that elevate the broader startup ecosystem.
- Lead customer storytelling initiatives from opportunity identification through content creation, distribution, and amplification.
- Partner with Startup Partnerships, Sales, and segment marketing teams to identify high-growth startups with compelling stories and match each customer with the appropriate co-marketing strategy.
- Create unique co-marketing partnerships, customer activations, advocacy initiatives, and community experiences.
- Transform individual customer stories into multiple content formats, including video, editorial content, case studies, social media, press opportunities, and event programming.
- Develop integrated, multi-format customer campaigns that build market trust and accelerate adoption.
- Coordinate internal and external amplification strategies to maximize the reach and business impact of customer stories.
- Identify opportunities to place customers and founders in speaking engagements, press coverage, industry events, and other high-visibility programs.
- Establish clear positioning, expectations, and processes for co-marketing opportunities offered to customers at different stages of the relationship.
- Build enablement materials that help Sales and other internal teams communicate customer marketing opportunities consistently.
- Create prioritization and intake processes to evaluate requests, allocate resources effectively, and ensure initiatives align with business objectives.
- Measure program performance and use data to improve customer engagement, advocacy, and overall marketing impact.
- Manage multiple concurrent projects while maintaining high standards for quality, communication, and execution.
Qualifications
- 6+ years of experience in customer marketing, customer advocacy, integrated marketing, or a related field.
- Significant experience supporting high-growth startups, emerging technology companies, or B2B SaaS organizations.
- Expert-level understanding of customer marketing strategies and the customer journey from adoption through advocacy.
- Proven success developing creative co-marketing partnerships, customer activations, advocacy programs, or community initiatives.
- Excellent written and verbal storytelling skills, including experience translating technical customer use cases into compelling business narratives.
- Track record of creating customer content across multiple formats, such as written stories, videos, social campaigns, executive speaking opportunities, and event programming.
- Experience building trusted relationships with startup founders, technical executives, and senior business leaders.
- Ability to partner closely with Sales to understand strategic customer relationships, identify opportunities, and determine where marketing support will have the greatest impact.
- Strong judgment and prioritization skills, including the ability to assess opportunities, manage competing requests, and push back confidently when an initiative is not aligned with business priorities.
- Experience amplifying customer stories across internal and external channels and using them as growth levers across the organization.
- Data-driven approach to measuring program effectiveness and improving results.
- Strong project management skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, with a history of successful collaboration across Sales, Product, Partnerships, Marketing, and Communications.
- Self-starter who is comfortable operating with ambiguity, creating structure, and executing with minimal direction.
- Strategic mindset combined with strong hands-on execution capabilities.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience placing customers, founders, or executives into speaking engagements, press opportunities, and event programming.
- Experience marketing to or working directly with AI-native startups and emerging technology companies.
- Background supporting both fast-growth startups and large enterprise technology customers.
- Experience establishing customer marketing intake, prioritization, or resource-allocation processes in partnership with a Sales organization.
- Experience creating programs that strengthen customer retention, engagement, advocacy, and long-term brand affinity.
- Familiarity with technical products, developer audiences, or complex B2B technology use cases.
Russell Tobin offers eligible employee’s comprehensive healthcare coverage (medical, dental, and vision plans), supplemental coverage (accident insurance, critical illness insurance and hospital indemnity), 401(k)-retirement savings, life & disability insurance, an employee assistance program, legal support, auto, home insurance, pet insurance and employee discounts with preferred vendors.
Equal Employment OpportunityRussell Tobin is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of the race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, reproductive health decision making, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.
Fair Chance EmploymentRussell Tobin is a Fair Chance employer. We consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable state and local Fair Chance laws and ordinances, including, the California Fair Chance Act and all applicable local Fair Chance ordinances.
AccommodationsWe are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities. If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the application or interview process, or to perform the essential functions of this role, please contact us.
Only applicable for San Francisco Candidates: Under the San Francisco Lactation in the Workplace Ordinance, we will provide written notice of lactation accommodation rights, and this notice will automatically be given upon hiring, any inquiry of parental leave or lactation accommodation.
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