Senior Director, Performance Marketing

About Ethos

Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

About The Role

As the Senior Director, Performance Marketing at Ethos, you will own strategy, performance, and budget across Paid Search, SEO/GEO, and Affiliates, leading the channel managers who run them day to day. This role is built for a sharp strategic thinker rather than a channel operator. Your channel managers know their platforms, and your job is to solve the harder problems they can't solve alone and to extend that thinking beyond channels you own. Ethos is destined for big things and we are betting that you will take the initiative and contribute to our success!

Duties & Responsibilities

• Strategic Ownership: Lead the strategy, budget allocation, and performance of Paid Search, SEO/GEO, and Affiliates, making the case for where incremental dollars should go and why.
• Team Leadership: Manage and develop a team of channel managers, coaching them on strategy, prioritization, and decision-making rather than day-to-day execution.
• Complex Problem Solving: Own the ambiguous, high-stakes questions your channels surface including competitive shifts, measurement disagreements, structural changes in how customers find us and drive them to a clear solution.
• Funnel Diagnosis & Advocacy: Your remit doesn't end at the click. You'll dig into where and why prospects drop off after they reach us, identify the highest-value fixes, and build the case that gets them prioritized with Growth Product and Analytics. This is a role with real influence over the full customer journey, not just the media that feeds it.
• Planning & Forecasting: Partner with Finance on forecasting, budget planning, and scenario modeling, and be the person who can explain clearly why we're ahead or behind and what to do about it.
• New Product Strategy: Help shape go-to-market strategy for new products, including audience sizing, channel fit, and how we test our way into what works.
• Performance Management: Monitor performance on a weekly and monthly basis, proactively making adjustments to optimize target KPIs.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate with internal teams (Creative, Analytics, MarTech, Growth Product, and Finance) to streamline all aspects of your managed channels.
• Thought Leadership: Drive innovation by designing and conducting rigorous tests, presenting results, and making strategic recommendations for new processes and tactics.

Qualifications & Skills

• • Proven Track Record: Demonstrated success in-house at a high-growth, DTC company (Fintech or Insurtech experience is a plus, but not required).
  • Critical Thinking: Exceptional structured problem-solving. You can take a vague, messy business question, break it down, decide what evidence would actually settle it, and land on a recommendation you can defend.
  • Relevant Experience: Minimum of 8 years in direct response or performance marketing, including experience leading and developing other marketers.
  • Channel Depth, Not Channel Breadth: Deep hands-on expertise in at least one biddable acquisition channel, and the ability to get smart on unfamiliar channels quickly. We care far more about how you think than whether you've personally run Search or Affiliates.
  • Analytical Strength: Advanced MS Excel skills and the ability to independently leverage business intelligence tools (e.g., Tableau) to get to your own answers. You're comfortable working with Analytics and Finance to understand downstream economics, not just top-of-funnel volume.
  • Strategic & Rigorous: You are equally excited by high-level strategy development and the "in-the-weeds" analysis required to know whether that strategy is working.
  • Operational Agility: Ability to work autonomously, learn rapidly, and prioritize effectively in a high-velocity startup environment.
  • Technical Collaboration: Experience working with AdTech and Data teams to prioritize platform requirements and measurement needs.
  • Testing Rigor: A disciplined approach to testing, iterating, and scaling based on data-backed learnings.

#LI-Remote #LI-MK1

The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $150,000 - $266,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. 

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only and do not include applicable bonus, equity, or benefits. 

You can find further details of our US benefits at https://www.ethoslife.com/careers/

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. At Ethos we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the SF Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrests and conviction records.

To learn more about what information we collect and how it may be used, please refer to our California Candidate Privacy Notice.

Recruitment Notice: Please be aware of recruitment scams. All legitimate communication from our team will only come from email addresses ending in @ethos.com or @getethos.com.

We will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the hiring process. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent us from a different email address, please treat it as fraudulent.