Performance Marketing Manager

About the role

We are looking for a founding Performance Marketing Manager to own all paid growth for Gist. This role requires 3-7 years of brand-side performance marketing experience, with direct ownership of budgets and outcomes for a consumer app, marketplace, or digital product. You will drive growth from cold start, manage off-platform partnerships, allocate budgets, and measure performance.

Responsibilities

• Earn full ownership of a critical function from day one, inside a company with the infrastructure, ad tech depth, and platform relationships to back you up.
• Own the monthly performance marketing budget with full accountability to CAC, CPI, LTV, and ROAS.
• Allocate across channels and partners dynamically based on performance, scale what works, cut what doesn't, and report spend decisions clearly to leadership.
• Work on tracking setup to extract meaningful signal, diagnose performance shifts, identify what’s working and what isn’t, and translate data into clear actions.
• Treat every campaign and partnership as a hypothesis. Document what you learn and build a compounding playbook over time.
• Partner with product and growth teams to understand post-install behavior, feed those insights back into performance marketing strategy and creative direction, and optimize toward activation and retention, not just volume.
• Explore non-obvious distribution channels such as influencer/KOL paid amplification, content seeding partnerships, cross-platform distribution deals, incentivised install ecosystems, and anything else early data suggests is worth testing.

Requirements

• Proven experience driving growth from cold start — you have launched performance marketing for a new product or market from zero, not just optimized an existing system.
• Hands-on fluency across Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, and Google Ads; programmatic and ad network experience a strong plus.
• Demonstrated experience managing off-platform or non-self-serve partnerships — ad networks, OEM or device partnerships, media direct buys, affiliate or performance platforms, or similar; you have negotiated deals and managed these relationships independently.
• Mobile attribution tooling experience with Adjust or equivalent; able to set up and own measurement infrastructure end-to-end, not just read reports someone else configured.
• Strong negotiation and partner management skills; comfortable building and managing external vendor and partner relationships independently.
• Senior individual contributor mindset — you thrive working independently, go deep on execution without needing a team beneath you, and bring enough seniority to set strategy and defend decisions to leadership without hand-holding.

Qualifications

• Experience running performance marketing specifically for a social, entertainment, or consumer app.
• Familiarity with incrementality testing, geo-splits, or media mix modelling.
• SQL or BI tool fluency (Looker, Tableau, Metabase) for self-serve analysis.

Skills

• Strong negotiation and partner management skills.
• Hands-on experience with multiple ad platforms (Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, Google Ads).
• Experience managing off-platform partnerships.
• Ability to set up and own measurement infrastructure.
• Experience with mobile attribution tools.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience with SQL or BI tools.

Benefits

Top-of-market compensation, full ownership of a critical function from day one, inside a company with the infrastructure, ad tech depth, and platform relationships to back you up. A lean, high-trust environment where decisions move fast and your impact is direct and visible.

Pay

Top-of-market compensation, with a pay for performance rewards approach. Total compensation at AppLovin is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Depending on the position offered, equity, and other forms of incentive compensation (as applicable) may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to dental, vision, and other benefits.

Schedule

AppLovin provides a competitive total compensation package with a pay for performance rewards approach. Total compensation at AppLovin is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Depending on the position offered, equity, and other forms of incentive compensation (as applicable) may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to dental, vision, and other benefits.

Application

The application window is expected to close within 30 days of the posting date. All questions or concerns about this posting should be directed to peopleops@applovin.com.

CA Base Pay Range

$119,000—$179,000 USD

Equal Opportunity Employer

AppLovin is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status, or other legally protected characteristics.