Principal PMM, Brand Narrative & Keynote

I started my career in Product Marketing and helped build the Sales Enablement function at HubSpot during its journey from startup to IPO. Since then, I've worked across RevOps and Customer Marketing at Procore and Meta, partnering with incredible teams to bring differentiated products to market. I first heard of Ashby through our Head of Content, Anum, with whom I'd spent those early days at HubSpot, and was inspired by the level of thoughtfulness and operating principles I saw and read about. I joined Ashby in April of 2024 to lead Product Marketing, thrilled to build something meaningful with people I admire, and to help shape the future of hiring in a way that's thoughtful, effective, and human.

We're a small team with high standards and mutual respect for our teammates and community. The way we do Product Marketing at Ashby reflects that, all with a good dose of fun 🎉. We value clarity over cleverness, lean into autonomy, and treat writing well and first-principles thinking as core parts of the job.

What we’re looking for

We're looking for a Principal PMM to own Ashby's overarching company and brand narrative.

This role is about deeply understanding what Ashby is building, why it matters, and what makes it meaningfully different, then connecting the dots and translating that clarity into messages that different audiences can engage with productively. You will synthesize inputs from customer research, product direction, market dynamics, and company vision into clear, compelling narratives that scale across the business.

You’ll own the messaging framework that serves as the foundation for the business and flexes across audiences and segments. Your work will manifest across every surface – from the headline on a billboard in San Francisco to the copy at a conference booth to the stories the sales team tells on the phone.

You'll also go deep on narrative for our startup and lower mid-market segments, working closely with our Enterprise PMM to make sure the overarching story stays coherent as it flexes across segments. This role starts as an individual contributor. Over your first few quarters, you'll focus on building and advancing the foundational work - the narrative, the frameworks, the keynote process - before growing and hiring a team underneath you.

Your Background

There's no perfect path into this role. We're open to a variety of backgrounds, including:

• Product Marketing
• Brand or Corporate Marketing
• Content or Communications leadership

What You’ll Do

Own Ashby's company and brand narrative

• Own the differentiation story at the company level - the message that has to work broadly, across every segment, without dilution.
• Maintain a scalable messaging framework that feeds into other teams’ work and go to market campaigns.
• Serve as the connective thread that keeps segment-specific narrative (Enterprise, startup, mid-market) consistent with the overarching company story.
• This work includes things like:
  • Maintaining strong proximity to the “front line” to ensure messaging reflects the real needs, objections, and language of our buyers.
  • Listening to Gong calls and engaging directly with customer-facing teams
  • Conducting one-on-one customer interviews and surveys
  • Running qualitative and quantitative market research studies
  • Using AI tools to synthesize findings across larger data sets

Own the annual keynote

• Own the narrative arc for Ashby's annual keynote, working directly with the CEO to shape and refine the story.
• Partner with other members of the PMM team to weave product launch content into the broader keynote narrative.
• Drive the overall progress and planning of keynote development, speaker management, and the details that make this an engaging, standout event.

Drive segment-specific narrative and content for startup and lower mid-market

• Conduct deep research and develop messaging for the startup and lower midmarket audiences, working closely with Sales Leadership when necessary
• Own narrative development and content like sales decks and enablement content for startup and lower mid-market audiences
• Partner with the Enterprise PMM, who will own upper mid-market and Enterprise narrative, to make sure both ends of the business tell a coherent, unified story.
• Work closely with our Partnerships team to ensure the work we do with our VC Program weaves into broader messaging

Build the foundation, then build the team

• Spend your first few quarters owning and evolving the narrative frameworks, keynote process, and segment-specific work
• Then partner with the Director of Product Marketing to grow a team under you

Examples of Projects You'll Work On

• Keynote ownership: Partner with Benji on the narrative arc for our next major keynote, coordinating input from other PMMs and the Product and Engineering orgs.
• Company narrative refresh: Lead the next refresh of Ashby's top-level differentiation story as the market and product evolve - includes research with our sales teams and customers, developing new narratives and arcs, updating decks, and partnering with the rest of PMM to roll out polished final assets.
• Startup/mid-market messaging and enablement: Build out narrative and content specific to early and scaling talent teams evaluating Ashby.
• Cross-segment alignment: Audit messaging across Enterprise, Mid-market, and Startup content to make sure the story holds together end to end.

You Might Be a Fit If You ...

• Are a confident, senior narrative thinker who can work directly with a CEO on high-stakes storytelling
• Thrive at the intersection of company vision, market dynamics, and enablement.
• Want to build and eventually lead a team, but are excited to do deep IC work first to earn that scope.
• Can hold a coherent narrative across wildly different audiences from a first-time founder to an Enterprise RecOps leader.
• Are extremely curious – e.g. you geek out over industry news, what it means for a company’s narrative, and are excited to be opinionated on the implications for the company and weave it into the stories we tell to all of our audiences.

You Might Not Be a Fit If ...

• You need a fully built team and process on day one.
• You struggle to connect the dots between various initiatives, teams, or product stories and get overwhelmed by the task of bringing them all together.
• You are drained by ambiguity or unsolved problems.
• You dread working with sales leaders.
• You aren't comfortable working directly with senior executives on high-visibility work.
• You don't love the enablement aspects of product marketing.
• You would struggle to find the through lines between customer anxieties, current industry news, and company direction.

Interview Process

At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. Our interview process is structured to get to know you and your career as well as empower you with insight into our key focus areas. Here is the process in its entirety:

• 30 min: Recruiter Screen with Talent Team
• 45 min: Interview with Hiring Manager (Rosalia)
• Leadership Panel with VP of Marketing (Harriet) and CEO (Benji)
• Assignment
• Final Round with Team Panel

BENEFITS

• You’ll get the time to do things the right way; we put a lot of emphasis on high quality work and avoid quick hacks as much as possible.
• Competitive compensation is offered.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks is recommended per year. Expect “Vacation?” in our one-on-one agenda until you start taking it 😅
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.

Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. We hope that excites you enough to apply

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.

Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.