Head of Growth

Kodable Education; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Job summary

Kodable Education is seeking a Growth Leader to own the growth model end-to-end for a K-5 digital literacy platform. You will set strategy, execute most growth initiatives, and directly manage the team while partnering with product to embed scalable growth loops.

You should bring 5+ years in growth or product marketing at small companies, with a track record of building systems from scratch and owning key metrics like activation, conversion, and retention.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in growth or product marketing, with senior/lead experience at a small company (<50 people)
• Experience building growth from scratch rather than inheriting a system
• Proven ability to own activation, free-to-paid conversion, or retention metrics
• Experience managing PLG initiatives: referral mechanics, activation flows, lifecycle emails, in-app campaigns
• Edtech experience with teacher/parent audience a plus

Responsibilities

• Own the growth model end-to-end: activation, referral loops, free-to-paid conversion, and parent audience strategies
• Execute most growth work: lifecycle emails, in-app campaigns, referrals, activation flows, landing pages, experiments
• Write, build, ship, and measure growth initiatives; develop the team while owning cross-functional growth work
• Collaborate with product to embed growth loops in the product itself and leverage school-to-home sharing and activation moments

Job description

Kodable prepares kids for the future by teaching essential digital literacy skills — coding, typing, STEM, and more. We're in over half the elementary schools in the US, we're profitable, and we need someone to own growth who actually knows what they're doing.

You'd lead a small team, set the strategy, and do a lot of the work yourself. There is no agency on retainer. There's no big department waiting for a leader. There's an opportunity to build something from a position of real strength.

If that sounds limiting, this isn't your role. If it sounds like freedom, keep reading.

What Kodable actually is

We're a K-5 digital literacy platform — started as a coding app, now expanding into typing and eventually digital citizenship. We've been around for 15 years, we're bootstrapped-in-spirit (lean, profitable, founder-led), and we've built something that teachers genuinely love. Our growth has been almost entirely product-led. Teachers find us, use the free version, and schools convert to paid when they see it working.

That's not a limitation — it's a clue. The best growth levers for Kodable look like product features, not ad campaigns. A share-your-progress button has outperformed every paid campaign we've ever run. The person who thrives here will find that fascinating, not frustrating.

What this role actually looks like

You'd own the growth model end to end. What levers move activation, what loops drive referral, how we convert free schools to paid, how we think about the parent audience, how we instrument and improve each stage of the funnel. You'd look at the whole picture and decide where to focus.

You'd execute most of it yourself. Lifecycle email, in-app campaigns, referral mechanics, activation flows, landing pages, launch experiments. You'd write, build, ship, and measure. You'd manage and develop the people on your team, but the strategic and cross-functional growth work is yours to do.

You'd work like a product person. Our best growth levers are baked into the product itself — school-to-home sharing, in-app events, activation flows, the moment a teacher sees a student's face light up and tells another teacher. You'd work closely with our product team to identify and build these loops. You've shipped things in-product, not just around it.

What has not worked (so we can save each other time)

• Paid acquisition. We've tried it. The economics don't work for our model. If your playbook starts with "let's test some Facebook ads," this isn't the role.
• Generic B2B SaaS marketing motions. We sell to schools. Teachers are not SDRs' inbound leads. The buying cycle is seasonal, budget-dependent, and relationship-driven.
• Marketing people who are "big picture" but can't execute. We're a lean company. Everyone does real work here.
• Brand and comms-heavy backgrounds. If your experience is primarily awareness campaigns, PR, or content strategy, this probably isn't the right fit. We need someone who thinks in funnels, loops, and instrumentation.

You're a good fit if

• You have 5+ years in growth or product marketing, with at least 2 in a senior or lead role at a company under 50 people
• You've been the first or second growth hire at a small company - and built things from scratch rather than inheriting a system
• You've owned activation rate, free-to-paid conversion, or a specific retention metric as your primary KPI — not as a secondary outcome of a campaign you ran
• You can describe a funnel you've instrumented from scratch — what you measured, what broke, and what you changed
• You have in depth experience managing PLG initiativesyourself: referral mechanics, activation flows, lifecycle email, in-app campaigns. Not managed vendors who did it- you actually built it
• You've marketed to an institutional B2B audience (schools, government, nonprofits, healthcare) and understand that procurement isn't an impulse purchase
• You're data literate: you can pull metrics, build a funnel view, instrument an experiment, and make decisions without a dedicated analyst
• You can operate growth tools end-to-end — build an email, add instrumentation, read data, and iterate without waiting for help
• You think about growth as a system, not a collection of channels
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and can self-direct without much structure
• You can write. Not "I can manage a copywriter" — you can write compelling copy yourself when it's the right tool
• You have taste. You know the difference between marketing that respects its audience and marketing that talks at them
• You have edtech experience, ideally K-12 or a platform with a teacher/parent dual audience
• You've grown a school-to-home or B2B2C channel where the end user and the budget holder are different people
• You've shipped a referral or word-of-mouth program with measurable lift

Logistics

• Reports directly to the founder/CEO
• $150,000–$200,000 annual salary
• 100% covered Health, Vision, Dental, and Life Insurance