Senior Performance Marketing Manager, GTM Experimentation

About Gusto

Gusto is dedicated to growing the small business economy. We handle critical tasks like payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR so business owners can focus on their craft and customers. With offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support over 500,000 small businesses nationwide and strive to create a workplace that mirrors the diverse communities we serve.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity. Gusto uses AI in all aspects of work, expects team members to engage with AI tools, and assesses AI experience during the interview process.

About the Role

We are seeking a seasoned performance marketer to lead paid social and emerging acquisition channels. This role requires owning execution and strategy for Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and TikTok, while meeting pipeline and revenue targets. You will manage significant budgets, apply Gusto's measurement framework, and identify new channels to test and scale.

Team Overview

This is a high-profile role within Gusto's Demand Generation team, which operates with autonomy, a bias for experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration. The team focuses on driving awareness and pipeline through paid media, and we value AI-native skills and a strong track record of performance marketing.

What You'll Do

• Own paid social strategy and execution across Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and TikTok, driving campaigns from brand awareness through retargeting and conversion.
• Manage significant, multi-million dollar budgets with rigor, including campaign pacing, forecasting, budget-vs-actuals analysis, and making the case for paid social investment in imperfect attribution environments.
• Apply and help refine Gusto's paid acquisition measurement framework, including attribution philosophy and budget allocation principles, in partnership with the broader marketing team.
• Lead creative strategy and testing at scale, briefing creative studios and agencies, structuring meaningful experiments, interpreting complex data sets to drive actionable insights, and building a clear learning roadmap.
• Identify, test, and validate new digital media channels and formats beyond core paid social, running structured pilots and making the call on scale vs. kill within existing budget guardrails.
• Support new product launches by building and executing the paid acquisition plan for launch moments, aligning with Integrated Marketing and Product Marketing.
• Partner with Web Marketing to align on landing page strategy, message match, and post-click conversion, ensuring paid social performance extends beyond the click.
• Use AI tools as a consistent, habitual part of your workflow, generating campaign briefs, developing copy variants, accelerating audience research, and building reusable systems that raise the bar for the whole team.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Integrated Marketing, Communications, and Web to align paid social with integrated campaigns and earned media moments, and bring performance data back upstream to influence creative production and asset strategy.

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of performance marketing experience at a B2B SaaS, performance marketing agency, or high-growth consumer organization, with deep expertise in paid social and a track record of testing and scaling new channels.
• Full-funnel ownership across two or more major paid social platforms (Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, TikTok), including deep, hands-on, in-platform execution (campaign builds, audience/targeting strategy, creative testing, bid/budget management), with significant budget responsibility and a track record of driving measurable pipeline impact.
• Strong creative strategy and testing instincts: you know how to structure a test, distinguish a learning from a result, and translate performance data into creative direction.
• AI-fluent in practice, not just in theory; you use AI tools consistently in your day-to-day workflow to accelerate briefs, copy, and analysis, and have a track record of implementing AI-driven efficiencies for your team.
• Excellent cross-functional collaborator who can translate integrated briefs into paid social strategy, advocate for what the channel needs, and work effectively alongside brand, web, and comms partners.
• Analytical and data-driven, with a clear point of view on attribution in imperfect measurement environments and comfort communicating paid social's contribution to business outcomes.

Compensation

The cash compensation amount for this role is $108,570/yr to $133,000/yr in Denver and $131,430/yr to $161,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above. Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role).