Head of Acquisition Marketing

ABOUT HAPPY MONEY

Happy Money is a consumer finance company that empowers people to achieve their goals through simple, transparent loans funded by trusted financial institutions. Through its proprietary lending platform, Hive, Happy Money delivers a fully digital experience that simplifies borrowing for consumers and helps credit unions, banks and asset managers diversify balance sheets and scale with confidence.

Happy Money’s end-to-end loan origination and participation programs provide partners with turnkey access to high-performing assets, underpinned by disciplined credit expertise and robust risk management. Together with its lending partners, Happy Money has originated more than $6.5 billion in loans to help nearly 350,000 people take greater control of their financial futures. Learn more at happymoney.com. View our Employee Privacy Policy here.

Happy Money is a 100% fully distributed company. Remote work doesn’t mean less work, we work full-time jobs and show up to them fully every day. To learn more about our values and the way we work, review our Happy Money Way Overview!

ABOUT THE ROLE

Happy Money seeks a strategic Head of Acquisition Marketing to own and scale our customer acquisition capabilities, with a primary focus on driving profitable loan originations. This is a builder's role for a data-driven leader who can set strategy and has a proven track record building a coordinated, multi-channel acquisition engine and scaling it efficiently. You will strike the balance between aggressive growth and disciplined spend to deliver optimized customer acquisition costs, and you'll anticipate where the market, competition, and channels are heading and position Happy Money ahead of them.

You will lead a high-impact team responsible for executing and optimizing multi-channel campaigns (direct mail, digital, lead generation, and affiliate partnerships) using data, experimentation, and rigorous analysis to drive growth while achieving profitability targets. The role owns both performance marketing and brand, with near-term focus and resource intensity weighted toward customer acquisition. Brand evolution will be sequenced as loan growth scales and investment capacity expands.

This role partners closely with the Head of Lifecycle Marketing, who owns the existing-borrower and lead-management side of the business. The partnership between Acquisition and Lifecycle is at the core of Happy Money's marketing function: together these roles drive substantial demand for Happy Money's products while maximizing the lifetime value of our customers and the monetization of acquired leads. At Happy Money we expect leaders to be a player-coach. This role will need to set strategy and roll up your sleeves to execute.

You thrive in a fast-paced environment, lead and mentor strong teams, and collaborate seamlessly with leaders across Credit/Risk & Analytics, Finance, Technology, and Operations.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the end-to-end acquisition strategy and deployment, driving scalable, profitable growth for our personal loan business.
• Deeply understand and anticipate market trends, competitive dynamics, VOC and channel shifts, and translate them into credible strategies and tactics that create durable competitive advantage.
• Develop and scale performance marketing strategy across multi-channel initiatives (direct mail, lead-gen email, affiliate, digital, content) and make high-quality expense allocation decisions grounded in how the business makes money, managing to optimize CAC, and unit economics. Ensure resiliency in the strategy that doesn’t over-index in any individual channel.
• Own consolidated forecasting, budget pacing, and performance reporting; partner with Finance on monthly forecasts, land results within tolerance, and establish standardized planning, documentation, and post-campaign reporting frameworks.
• Foster a relentless "test and learn" culture by applying rigorous logic and honest analysis, challenging assumptions, and learning quickly from both wins and failures to continuously sharpen the approach.
• Communicate complex issues, tradeoffs, and recommendations into clear and compelling narratives that drive aligned decisions across the organization from analysts to senior leadership.
• Build and lead a high-accountability function defined by clear priorities, disciplined execution, and a culture that moves with urgency and discipline to deliver consistently exceptional results.
• Hire, develop, and mentor a team of high-performing growth marketers and assemble the right mix of internal talent, agency/partner resources, and AI agents, knowing when and how to leverage each.
• Drive go-to-market, brand, and product marketing through strong value articulation, competitive positioning, and messaging for net-new customer acquisition.
• Act as a subject-matter expert on emerging martech, AI, and attribution, and on product features and cross-sell opportunities that drive growth and revenue. Partner with Strategy to develop and inform growth goals, and with Technology to plan, build, and evolve the Happy Money marketing engine.

ABOUT YOU

• 10+ years of experience in marketing and customer acquisition, overseeing significant budgets that tie directly to revenue targets, plus 5+ years leading marketing teams.
• Consumer Lending or complementary experience, including a track record of scaling credit or lending products and managing acquisition funnels.
• Well-versed and effective across affiliate marketplaces, paid digital, lead generation, direct mail, and email, with deep understanding of attribution models, marketing technology, and the use of AI in marketing.
• Deep understanding of how a lending business makes money and what drives performance, with the ability to make high-quality decisions from a mix of analysis, experience, and judgment.
• Sharp thinking and rigor in debating ideas; comfort with complexity, ambiguity, and pushback; and a deeply data-focused, test-and-learn mindset that generates ideas by connecting across disciplines and data.
• A builder of high-performing teams, composing internal talent, partners, and increasingly AI agents, who recruits, develops, and retains top performers, sets a high bar, and leads by example.
• Ability to drive initiatives from concept to results, owning execution and analysis with a builder's mentality.
• Experience leading acquisition through a martech platform transition (CDP, lead routing, attribution).

BENEFITS & PERKS

• Generous medical, dental, and vision insurance options
• Eligible for annual bonus & long-term incentives
• 401k Plan with a matching contribution
• Generous PTO including sick leave, vacation, volunteer, and more
• 12 Weeks Paid Parental Leave
• Company-paid short & long term disability and life insurance
• Monthly tech stipend to help cover expenses for remote work
• Happy Money is a 100% fully distributed workforce