Head of Marketing

HEAD OF MARKETING

Location: Remote Status: Full-Time

At Misfits & Machines, the innovation sister company of Marketing Architects, we build AI-native adtech platforms. Our lead platform is moving from build into beta.

We already know what we think it is. We have a category thesis, a tagline we believe in, a manifesto, and a defined audience. And the tech is amazing. What we do not have is someone to take all of that from a strong idea to a thing the market actually says back to us.

That is the job.

The hard part, stated plainly

There is an obvious version of what we sell. It is easier to explain, it already has a name, and several very well funded companies are already sitting in it, with more arriving. Positioning ourselves there would be the safe move, and we believe it would be fatal. It is a commodity ditch.

The position we believe in is harder to say, harder to sell on first contact, and much better. It makes a claim about how ordinary businesses become known that the incumbents cannot make.

Your job is to take that position, sharpen it, and make it real. Not invent it from nothing, and not soften it into the legible thing everyone else is selling. The pull toward that ditch will be constant, it will come from smart people with good reasons, and holding the line while still shipping revenue is the difficulty of the role.

If you have never had to defend a position that was right but harder to explain, this will not go well for either of us.

What we believe, and the ratio

Marketing exists to create demand, not to serve it. Not to support sales. Not to feed a pipeline. Most of the people who will eventually buy from us are not in the market today, and reaching them is not waste, it is the job. Our thinking is rooted in Ehrenberg-Bass: mental availability, distinctive brand assets, easy to remember beats clever at persuading.

So here is the ratio, plainly. About 60 percent of this role is creating demand (category, brand, reach, the argument) and about 40 percent is capturing it, with your own hands (the site, the signup funnel, lifecycle, paid, AEO, and the instrumentation that proves any of it worked).

Our lead platform is self-serve. There is no sales team standing by to catch a lead. If someone becomes interested and the path from interest to first dollar is bad, that is a marketing failure and it is yours. The bottom of the funnel is not beneath this job, it is downstream of it.

On measurement: we are not anti-data. We are against letting only the measurable things count.

Role overview

You own marketing for Misfits & Machines. All of it, as a function of one, leveraged by AI, with executive air cover and a real creative engine behind you. When the model proves out, you hire beneath you.

What does not exist yet is the market believing any of it. Nobody outside this building uses our language. No demand engine, no baseline, no proof. Turning internal conviction into external reality is the whole assignment, and it is unglamorous more often than not.

This is a founding function inside a company that is not early stage: established leadership, developed doctrine, and a capital position most founding marketers never get. Want it because of that, not in spite of it.

What you'll own

Creating demand

• The category and its language. Pressure-test the thesis, sharpen it, and evolve it into positioning and narrative that survive real buyers. Then extend it into every surface so it is a platform, not a tagline. The center of the job.
• Brand. Voice, identity, and standards, built with our creative team. Brand as demand creation, not as a guidelines PDF.
• Reach. The channels that build mental availability, including the broadcast and audio ones this company knows better than anyone.
• The story in market. Content, social, editorial, and PR that carries an argument instead of filling a calendar.

Capturing it, yourself

• The self-serve funnel. Signup, activation, onboarding. You will be in the analytics finding where people quit.
• Lifecycle and email. Nurture, retention, winback.
• Paid, where it earns its place. With the discipline to know when a channel is buying demand we already made versus making new.
• Search and answer-engine visibility. People will start looking once we give them the words. Be there when they do.
• Instrumentation. Measurement that defends top-of-funnel spend to a skeptical room, and reporting that shows what converts.

Across both: turning product reality into market reality with product, engineering and creative; building AI workflows we have not thought of yet; and hiring your team when the math says so.

Who you are

• You have a belief system about how marketing works, and you can tell us where it came from. A conviction with an origin story, ideally one that cost you something.
• You have made a market actually use a new idea. Not authored a positioning deck. Carried a position through campaigns, product, and press until customers and competitors used the words. This is the gate.
• You can tell the difference between a position that is right and one that is merely legible, and you will defend the harder one.
• You are unmistakably practical. You have shipped the landing page, written the email sequence, read the funnel report, and killed your own campaign when the numbers said to. Recently, and with your own hands.
• You have marketed a platform, ideally one worth nothing until both sides showed up. Tell us how you broke the cold start.
• You know the small business owner as a buyer. The owner-operator who signs the check and has never bought television, not a procurement committee. And you will do that grind yourself.
• Presence. You will be the face of this platform on stages, on camera, and on podcasts. You need the energy that makes strangers lean forward. Not negotiable, not coachable.
• You build with AI, you do not just use it. Opinions about the tools, your own job rebuilt around them, and something you made that you can show us.
• Marketing has actually been your title. Ten-plus years of real depth in brand, category, demand creation, or product marketing. Broadcast literacy (TV, radio, audio, CTV) is a strong plus.
• You will push back when you think we are wrong. We would rather argue with you than manage you.

The two ways people fail this role: the strategist with a beautiful worldview who has not shipped anything in five years, and the operator who runs every channel but has no idea what the company is trying to mean. We need both halves in one person.

What this role is not

• Not a demand-gen or performance-marketing seat. Running lead capture and automation is part of the job. Believing that is the job is the mismatch. If your center of gravity is MQL-to-SQL modeling, you will be unhappy.
• Not a sales, BD, partnerships, or revenue role. Separate seats, separate hires. No quota.
• Not a CMO seat. No org underneath you on day one. You earn that.

Your first year

Months 1 to 3. Absorb the product, the thesis, and the customer. Come back with your honest read: where the position is strong, where it is soft, what you would sharpen. We want it argued with, not accepted. In parallel, stand up the stack, instrument the site and funnel, and set the baselines we do not have today.

Months 4 to 6. The evolved positioning is settled and adopted across leadership, product, and creative. Site rebuilt around it. Content and social carrying the argument. First paid tests running. Lifecycle sequences shipped.

Months 7 to 12. By month twelve we should know three things: whether the market has started using our words instead of the commodity category's, whether demand is being created at the pace the platform requires, and whether the path from first visit to first dollar has improved on real volume. If so, the playbook carries to the next product.

Compensation This is structured as a salary-and-bonus role, not an equity-driven early-stage package. The base is set at the upper end of senior commercial leadership compensation for this market, with meaningful annual variable tied to milestone-based deliverables in year one and transitioning to pipeline and revenue variable in year two. We're happy to discuss specifics with finalists.

BENEFITS OVERVIEW

We offer rewarding careers that encourage growth while providing industry-leading benefits including:

• Fully remote within the US
• 100% employer-paid medical, dental and disability, with vision option
• Traditional and Roth 401(k) with a 4% company match
• Flexible paid time off, 9 paid holidays plus 2 floating holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Annual office supply allowance, monthly internet stipend and employer-paid cell phone
• Opportunities to connect virtually and in-person twice a year with our fully remote team

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

We want applications from everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, citizen status, age, disability, military or protected veteran status, genetic predisposition or carrier status or any other legally protected status.

Our remote-friendly work model supports flexibility across the US, however we are currently unable to support employment in California. We are unable to consider applicants who live outside of the US.

At this time, we're not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future. This includes, but is not limited to: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J-1, O-1, etc.

The application for this position may request a short, job relevant assessment as part of our multi-stage interview process. Reasonable accommodations are available for this assessment, please let reach out to talentteam@markarch.com.

The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, location and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

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