Director of Customer Marketing & Advocacy

Description

The company is hiring a Director of Customer Marketing & Advocacy to feature customers and strengthen one of its biggest growth levers.

This is a building and influencing role. You will grow customer marketing into a strategic function that moves market share, mindshare and awareness, with a focus on enterprise segments and AI-native startups.

The company wants a leader who will challenge the usual way of running customer marketing, drive change, and build an AI-enabled system that finds, matches and activates customer voices quickly and at scale, a program that peers aim to match.

You will replace manual, one-off work with automation and AI so customer stories reach each channel sooner with less effort, and you will rethink the function and its operating model.

Customer voice will anchor the company's brand, with customers appearing on stages, in analyst and press conversations, in brand campaigns and content, and throughout the buying process. You will also set up a channel where customer feedback sharpens how Product and Product Marketing position, message and launch. Every moment will be planned, measured and tied to corporate goals.

You will lead the customer marketing team across AMER and EMEA and work closely with Brand, Communications, Strategic Events, Social Media, Product Marketing, Executive Programs, Sales, Customer Success, Partners, Product and Investor Relations.

The company runs a cloud-native, globally distributed data platform available on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. It has offices worldwide and serves over 67,000 customers, including AI-native startups and approximately 75% of the Fortune 100.

Responsibilities

• Make customer voice central to the company's story on every channel.
• With Brand Marketing & Creative, make customer results a core part of the brand narrative and campaigns, raising awareness and mindshare and shaping how the market sees the company.
• Set the editorial standard for case studies, video and executive point-of-view content, and make sure those stories flow into brand, social, communications, events and demand programs.
• With Strategic Events, place customers at the center of flagship events, keynotes, webinars and brand activations by recruiting and preparing customer speakers.
• With Communications, connect customers with press, analysts and industry influencers who shape enterprise and developer opinion, so third-party voices carry the story further.
• Set the charter, operating model and multi-year roadmap for a function that combines storytelling, advocacy, executive engagement and influencer relationships, and build a program that peers can benchmark against.
• Build an AI-enabled system that uses automation and AI to find, match and activate customer voices, covering story intake, customer matching, content tagging and performance reporting. Replace ad hoc requests with clear standards, shared ownership, defined dependencies and accountability for results.
• Lead the global strategy for recruiting and nurturing customers across enterprise segments and AI-native startups, so the right voice is ready for each moment and channel.
• Put customer evidence into brand campaigns, product launches, demand programs and sales conversations so it becomes a dependable part of how the company markets, launches and wins deals.
• Make customer insight a two-way exchange. Capture what customers say through stories and feed it back to Product and Product Marketing to shape positioning, messaging and launches.
• Define KPIs and an attribution model that links customer proof to brand awareness and mindshare, revenue growth, retention and expansion.
• Build executive sponsorship across Brand, Communications, Social, Events, Sales, Customer Success, Product, Partners, Product Marketing and Investor Relations.
• Set vision, priorities and metrics. Hire, coach and develop a high-performing global team, including people managers. Own the budget, agencies and tooling behind the work.

Requirements

• 10+ years of B2B marketing experience, including significant leadership of customer marketing, advocacy or customer-led brand programs at an enterprise software, cloud, data or developer-focused company.
• 5+ years leading teams, including managing managers and teams spread across regions.
• A record of pushing a customer marketing or advocacy program past the standard model, building systems that scale and producing work that peers and the wider community treat as a benchmark.
• Hands-on use of AI and automation to scale customer marketing or advocacy operations, and a clear view of where AI is taking the function.
• Experience building or scaling a customer marketing function through major growth or change, with quantifiable results.
• Strong storytelling and editorial judgment, including making customer voice central to a brand narrative and turning complex technology into clear, credible business stories.
• Experience weaving customer voice into brand campaigns, communications, social and influencer marketing, events and product launches.
• A proven record of building advocacy and co-marketing programs that recruit and keep a strong, diverse base of customer participants.
• Executive presence, with experience engaging C-level customers and changing senior leaders' minds with data and customer evidence.
• Experience building cross-functional operating models with clear ownership, dependencies and accountability, and influencing stakeholders without direct authority.
• Comfort in a fast-moving, technical, AI-driven market.
• Preferred: experience marketing to both large enterprises and startups, and to technical buyers or developers as well as executive decision makers.
• Preferred: experience with AI-enabled advocacy or customer evidence platforms.
• Preferred: experience supporting executive communications, keynote development or large-scale customer events.
• Preferred: experience supplying customer proof for earnings, investor or analyst materials at a public company.
• Preferred: a recognized presence in the customer marketing community, such as conference speaking, advisory boards, industry awards, published thought leadership or teaching.

Conditions

This role can be remote in the United States.

Base salary range for the U.S.: $115,000 - $226,000 USD.

Final pay depends on skill set, experience, qualifications and work location. Base salary is one part of total compensation.

Requisition ID: 3273589523.

Accommodations for disabilities are available during the application and interview process. Ask your recruiter.

Benefits

• Equity and participation in the employee stock purchase program.
• Flexible paid time off.
• 20 weeks fully paid, gender-neutral parental leave.
• Fertility and adoption assistance.
• 401(k) plan.
• Mental health counseling.
• Transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage and other health benefit options.
• Employee affinity groups.
• The salary range and benefits above apply only to U.S.-based candidates.