Senior Paid Social Lead

Gusto•Chicago, NY

1d•$151,020 - $210,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Gusto is looking for a Paid Social Marketing Lead to own our paid social program end-to-end from brand awareness through conversion across social channels such as Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok. This is a high-visibility, high-impact role at the intersection of performance marketing, creative strategy, and AI-powered workflow design. You'll have full strategic and creative latitude over one of Gusto's most important acquisition channels, with direct influence on pipeline and revenue. If you're a full-funnel paid social operator who thinks in systems, holds creative and data rigor in equal measure, and uses AI as a genuine daily tool, we want to meet you. You'll join Gusto's Demand Generation team, a high-performing group of performance marketers who care deeply about the craft of marketing and the mission behind it. Within Demand Gen, you'll be embedded on the Paid Acquisition team, a focused group responsible for driving awareness and pipeline through paid media. This team operates with high autonomy, a bias for experimentation, and a culture of cross-functional generosity. We hold ourselves to a high standard, move fast, and genuinely believe that being AI-native is part of what it means to do this job well today.

Requirements

10+ years of paid social experience at a B2B SaaS, performance marketing agency, or high-growth consumer organization
Full-funnel ownership across two or more major paid social platforms (Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Tiktok) with meaningful budget responsibility and a track record of driving measurable pipeline impact
Demonstrated experience managing external agencies and/or contractors — setting expectations, measuring performance, and holding partners to a high bar
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 you're building toward systematizing those habits for your team (Explorer-level minimum; Integrator trajectory preferred)
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

Responsibilities

Own paid social strategy and execution across Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and Tiktok, driving full-funnel campaigns from brand awareness through retargeting and conversion, with accountability to pipeline and revenue targets
Manage meaningful budget with rigor including campaign pacing, forecasting, budget-vs-actuals analysis, and making the case for paid social investment in imperfect attribution environments
Lead creative strategy and testing at scale — briefing creative studios and agencies, structuring meaningful experiments, reading results with precision, and building a clear learning roadmap
Partner with Web Marketing to align on landing page strategy, message match, and post-click conversion — because paid social performance doesn't end at the click
Manage agencies and contractors end-to-end, setting clear expectations, reviewing quality, and holding partners accountable to results
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, product launches, and earned media moments — and bring performance data back upstream to influence what gets made