Head of Growth

Sauna by Wordware; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health

Dental

401(k)

Equity

Generous PTO

Gym budget

Lunch

Job summary

Sauna by Wordware in San Francisco is seeking a Head of Growth to own Sauna's path from thousands of users to millions. You’ll be the first dedicated growth hire and build the machine from scratch, then scale the team in SF. You’ll report to the CEO on a ~20-person team.

This is a senior role, requiring prior end-to-end growth leadership. The playbook centers on owning the full consumer growth stack, then hiring a PMM/copy person, a front-end engineer for programmatic SEO, and a motion designer.

Qualifications

• Proven growth leadership at a fast-moving startup.
• Exceptional copywriting skills with a punchy, opinionated style.
• Experience building growth channels from zero to meaningful scale.
• Deep understanding of AI/content landscape across major platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own the full consumer growth stack (social virality, programmatic SEO, paid ads, sponsorships, newsletters).
• Build viral loops in-product and out of product.
• Run and iterate on paid channels (Google Ads, social ads, sponsorships, newsletters).
• Build a content engine to showcase product capabilities.
• Lead programmatic SEO and partner with engineering. ROI-focused.
• Hire and grow the growth team as channels prove out.

Skills

Growth strategy

Copywriting

Viral marketing

SEO collaboration

Team leadership

Analytics

Tools

Google Ads

SEO tools

Content creation tools

Job description

About Sauna By Wordware

Most AI products hand you a coworker on day one and hope you trust it. Sauna is the coworker you raise: it starts by learning how you work, earns autonomy task by task, and ends up running hours of work on its own while you keep taste, review, and the final say. Wordware is the ~20-person team behind it, backed by Spark Capital, Felicis, and Y Combinator with a $30M seed, the largest in YC history. We build from a San Francisco office in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we work absurdly hard because we can see and feel the outcome every day.

About The Role

We\'re looking for a Head of Growth to own Sauna\'s path from thousands of users to millions. You\'ll be the first dedicated growth hire and the person who builds the machine from scratch, then builds the team to run it. You\'ll report to the CEO, on a team of ~20 in SF. This is a senior role, it\'s for someone who has run growth end to end before, not a first growth job.

The playbook: own the full consumer growth stack yourself first. Once channels prove out, you hire: a PMM/copy person (copy is the key skill here, not technical ability), a frontend-leaning engineer for programmatic SEO and the explore page, and a motion designer whose aesthetic is Johnny Harris, not generic corporate explainer videos. You use Sauna to make viral content. That\'s the job.

Product growth (activation, onboarding) stays in the product team. This role is everything that drives people to the door. You should already know this playbook cold. If a lot of the below is new to you, this probably isn\'t your role.

What You\'ll Do

• Own the full consumer growth stack: social virality, programmatic SEO, paid ads, sponsorships and newsletters, affiliates, invite virality, engineering as marketing, content, courses, university partnerships
• Build viral loops in-product and out that compound over time
• Run and iterate on paid channels: Google Ads, social ads, sponsorships, newsletters. Use an agency for paid ads initially, don\'t hire in-house yet.
• Build a content engine. Dog food Sauna to show what the product can do.
• Own programmatic SEO and partner with engineering to build it. The ROI is disproportionate: 50K page views from one week of engineering time.
• Run outreach to accelerators, universities, and AI communities for bulk activation
• Hire and lead the growth team as channels prove out: PMM/copy person first, then frontend engineer, then motion designer

Minimum

Who You Are:

• Have done this before. Run growth at a fast-moving startup, owned a channel from zero to meaningful scale.
• Write exceptionally well. Punchy, specific, opinionated copy that converts. The PMM/copy person you\'ll hire is only as good as your brief.
• Know the AI content landscape cold. What\'s working on X, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok right now.
• Have viral intuition: what makes people share, what makes products loop.
• Be able to run a launch end-to-end: positioning, copy, social, email, video brief.
• Be technical enough to partner with engineering on SEO without needing a ticket for every request.
• Know exactly who to hire, in what order, and why. You\'ve built a growth team before.

Bonus (but Not Required)

• Scaled a consumer product to 100K+ users in a noisy, competitive market
• Built a growth team from scratch and know exactly what that first hire looks like
• A strong copy portfolio: viral posts, landing pages, email campaigns that performed
• Shipped programmatic SEO with an engineering partner
• Relationships with creators, newsletters, or AI community distribution channels
• Already using Sauna or similar AI tools as a core part of how you work, not as a novelty

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $180K–$240K + meaningful early-stage equity + health, dental, 401(k), considerable PTO, gym budget, lunch.