Director of Product Marketing

EF Education First Ltd.; Zürich; On-site; CHF 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

EF Language Abroad seeks a Director of Marketing to drive the marketing strategy for Academic Year Abroad, translating global direction into locally relevant plans with markets. You will partner with Product, Sales, and Central Creative and Digital teams to deliver prioritized programs and measurable outcomes.

You will report to the Product Head and work with EF Language Abroad’s leadership to turn customer insights into compelling, on‑brand messaging and scalable GTM playbooks across markets.

Qualifications

• 8–12 years of experience in product marketing, brand, or GTM.
• Experience in education, travel, or subscription businesses preferred.
• Strong collaboration and storytelling abilities.

Responsibilities

• Establish and nurture partnerships with Product Heads and central teams.
• Build collaboration with markets, sales, central marketing and tech teams.
• Drive global positioning and messaging across the program.
• Define a distinctive value proposition for Academic Year Abroad.
• Lead GTM strategy for launches, expansions, and updates.
• Own voice of customer and competitive intelligence insights.
• Create sales tools and enablement for local marketing teams.
• Own audience segmentation and persona frameworks.
• Oversee customer-led journey from awareness to booking and prep.
• Collaborate on pricing communication and market-ready narratives.
• Shape KPIs and marketing goals to drive qualified demand and growth.
• Monitor trends to keep EF ahead of the competition.

Skills

Marketing strategy leadership

Go-to-market planning

Cross-functional collaboration

Storytelling & messaging

Customer insights & research

Job description

EF Language Abroad has three business units (Products) that people around the world have been experiencing for more than 65 years: Language Travel, Academic Year Abroad and International Language Schools, and we are looking for a Director of Marketing to help them grow.

This role exists at the intersection of art and spreadsheet. This role is about helping us find as many customers as possible and it isn't a role for someone who wants to maintain the status quo. It's for someone who sees a crowded market and thinks "I know how to cut through this”. Someone who finds genuine joy in turning complexity into clarity. Someone who wants to grow grow grow.

What you’ll do:

This role sets and drives the marketing strategy for the Academic Year Abroad portfolio, translating global direction into locally relevant plans in partnership with markets. It aligns and mobilizes Product, Sales, Central Creative and Digital teams to deliver those plans, setting priorities, directing resources and owning results.
You'll own the go-to-market strategy for our most exciting growth bets. That means getting deep into the minds of our customers, wrestling with market data until it tells you something genuinely interesting, and translating all of it into marketing that's better than what's out there.

You’ll report to the Product Head with a dotted line to EF Language Abroad's Head of Marketing, and partner closely with the product’s Sales and Marketing Directors across our global markets. Your inner circle will include our key leaders in EF Language Abroad’s Central teams including our VP of Digital Marketing, Creative Director, and Director of Product Development. These people are the ones who will help you turn a sharp brief into something that actually moves people (and moves the business).

This one's for you if:

You toggle effortlessly between instinct and analysis. You brief like a strategist and think like a storyteller. You believe that good marketing does not interrupt people, it attracts them.

Still nodding? Then read on…

In this role, you will:

• Establish and nurture partnershipswith the Product Heads as well as Language Abroad’s Central Creative Studio and Digital Marketing Team and lead all product marketing efforts to ensure on-brand localization of both product and central marketing effort and strategies.
• Build and foster collaboration with markets, sales, central creative, central marketing, technology, and product development teams to deeply understand what we sell and who we sell it to.
• Drive Positioning & Messagingby owning the global positioning framework and messaging hierarchy across the Product’s full program and destination portfolio.
• Define and champion a distinctive value proposition for Academic Year Abroad that clearly sets the program apart from competing options. Bring to life the benefits of developing language fluency through living abroad, including personal growth, independence, connection, and future opportunities, and support the story with compelling, audience-relevant proof points.
• Lead Go to Market (GTM) strategy for all launches, expansions, and updates; build scalable GTM playbooks with built-in local adaptability.
• Champion Customer & Market Intelligence by owning the voice of customer, competitive insights, and the feedback loop between markets and the product roadmap. Turn research, customer feedback and journey data into action, testing and refining messaging and experiences, then translating the insights into recommendations that shape the product roadmap and local market plans.
• Partner with Product Heads and Sales Management on Commercial Enablement, creating and maintaining sales tools, training, and enablement of materials for commercial and local marketing teams.
• Own Audience & Segmentation, including persona frameworks, and translate these into actionable briefs for all channel teams.
• Own the design and continuous improvementof a customer-led Academic Year Abroad journey—from initial awareness through exploration, consultation, decision, booking and preparation. Partner with Sales, Digital, Product and local markets to remove friction and connect online discovery, chat, self-service and human support into a seamless experience shaped around customer needs.
• Work with the Commercial Director and Product Head on Pricing Communication, turning pricing decisions into compelling, market ready value narratives.
• Help establish a culture of accountability by shaping departmental KPIs and setting clear marketing goals and objectives.Translate marketing objectives into measurable business outcomes, including qualified demand, booking conversion, student growth, customer experience and profitable growth. Balance volume targets with value creation, sound pricing and disciplined discounting.
• Keep EF ahead of the competition and ensure the business remains “futureproof” by monitoring trends and evolving our strategies to meet market needs.

You’ll be successful in this role if you have:

• 8–12 years of experience in product marketing, brand, or GTM—preferably in education, travel, or subscription based businesses.
• Strong international experience, with high EQ and the ability to navigate cultural nuances and balance local relevance with global scalability.
• Exceptional collaboration and networking skills, paired with strong presentation, communication, and storytelling abilities.Experience with planning, budgeting, and managing P&L
• The ability to write and present strategic, on brand briefs that resonate with creative, media, and market teams.
• Experience designing and managing GTM plans at global scale, including collaboration with central Brand and Media planning/buying teams.
• Expertise in customer research and competitive intelligence leadership.
• Proven ability to develop compelling, differentiated value propositions and position products effectively against direct competitors and alternative customer choices.
• Demonstrated ability to improve end-to-end customer journeys across marketing, digital, sales and consultation—using customer insight and funnel data to identify friction and drive better outcomes.
• Proven ability to turn marketing activity into measurable commercial impact, driving conversion, sustainable growth and profitability.
• Channel literacy across paid, organic, SEO, social, and CRM—able to brief effectively without owning execution.
• A deep understanding of emerging communication, media consumption, marketing,