About this role.
Upbound seeks a senior Head of Growth Marketing to own the end-to-end commercial funnel for its cloud infrastructure and open-source platform offerings. Reporting to the VP of Marketing, this leader will direct paid acquisition, lifecycle marketing, marketing operations, attribution, conversion optimization, SEO, and self-serve activation. The role is explicitly AI-first, requiring the candidate to redesign growth workflows with AI-native tools, automated analysis, and agentic processes. Success depends on hands-on analytics, budget ownership, technical-buyer marketing experience, and the ability to build a small growth team across enterprise sales-led and product-led motions.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
5/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin by mapping distinct journeys for open-source users, technical evaluators, product-qualified leads, and enterprise buying committees. I would define stage-level conversion and velocity metrics, then connect content, paid programs, lifecycle nurture, product signals, and sales engagement to the appropriate journey. The strategy would prioritize channels and offers based on incremental pipeline, activation, and paid-conversion impact rather than volume alone.
I would pilot an agent-assisted campaign intelligence workflow that unifies CRM, automation, ad-platform, web, and product-usage signals into a consistent performance view. The workflow would flag segment-level conversion changes, recommend test hypotheses, summarize campaign learnings, and route qualified account signals to the right owners. Human review and source validation would remain mandatory, particularly for claims aimed at technical audiences.
I start with business goals and historical unit economics, including pipeline creation, win rate, sales-cycle length, CAC, and payback by segment and channel. I reserve a defined portion of the budget for structured experiments while scaling channels only after measuring incremental outcomes. I also establish clear stop-loss thresholds so underperforming programs are reduced or cut quickly.
I would define a funnel around signup, onboarding completion, activation behaviors, repeat usage, account expansion signals, trial conversion, and paid conversion. Cohort analysis would identify where users stall and which personas, acquisition sources, and product actions correlate with retention and revenue. Those insights would inform lifecycle messaging, in-product guidance, landing-page improvements, and product prioritization.
I would work closely with product, engineering, developer relations, and customers to ensure every message is technically precise and evidence-based. Programs would focus on real operational problems, architectures, implementation examples, and measurable outcomes instead of generic marketing language. I would also use community feedback and performance data to continually refine positioning and avoid claims that technical buyers would find unsubstantiated.
Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane, and we’re building the Intelligent Control Plane—a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable.
Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence.
Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries. Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide. We’re a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, and we’ve raised $69M to date. Learn more at upbound.io
We are hiring a Head of Growth Marketing to own the Upbound funnel end to end. This role reports directly to the VP of Marketing. This is an AI-first role. We are not looking for someone to bolt AI onto a legacy demand generation playbook and build the growth function around AI-native tools and workflows. You will own campaigns, and the systems across our marketing stack. This is a great opportunity to build and operate a stack and growth function that will grow with the organization and support our enterprise and product led motions.
What you will own
- Full-funnel growth for the Upbound commercial platform, with Crossplane and Modelplane driving open source top of the funnel.
- The campaign roadmap and program budget, with regular business reviews alongside marketing and sales leadership.
- Paid media. You set the channel mix, the targeting, and the efficiency bar against company and sales targets
- Lifecycle marketing and marketing operations, including the marketing automation platform, attribution model, and funnel reporting.
- Conversion, organic search, and AI answer visibility across upbound.io, and modelplane.ai
- The self-serve motion, from signup through activation to paid conversion, in partnership with the product and engineering organization.
- Build and manage a growth team built over several quarters across
- Manage and maintain relationships and efficiencies with agencies, and vendors.
How you will evolve the growth function
- Evaluate, pilot, and adopt AI-native marketing tools. Retire the ones that do not earn their place.
- Replace manual reporting with AI-assisted analysis so the team spends its time on decisions instead of spreadsheets.
- Compress the campaign production cycle. Audience research, creative variants, landing pages, and iteration should move in days, not weeks.
- Build agentic workflows for repeatable work such as list building, enrichment, signal routing, and post-campaign analysis.
- Set the standard for how AI-assisted work gets reviewed. Speed matters. So does accuracy in a market of technical buyers who will catch a wrong claim immediately.
- Bring a point of view on what happens to the funnel as buyers research through AI assistants instead of search engines, and get us there first.
You are a good fit if you
- Have 10+ years in B2B marketing, including at least 3 leading growth, demand generation, or acquisition.
- Have owned a meaningful program budget and can walk through how you allocated it, what returned, and what you cut.
- Are still hands-on. You get into the ad platforms, the automation platform, the dashboards, and the data yourself.
- Have already changed how a marketing team works by introducing AI tools, and can describe honestly what worked and what did not.
- Are fluent in analytics. You can size an opportunity, design a test, and defend a number in front of the sales team.
- Have marketed to technical buyers, ideally platform engineers or infrastructure teams.
- Have built or managed a small team.
- Work well with autonomy and know when to ask for support.
It is a plus if you
- Have worked in open source, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or AI infrastructure.
- Have run growth for a sales-led and a self-serve motion at the same company.
- Have used intent data and account signal tools.
- Have shipped something yourself with AI. A workflow, a script, an internal tool, an agent.
- Have contributed to a technical community rather than only marketed to one.
#LI-REMOTE
Why Upbound?
At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you’re excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table.
About Upbound
Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes – based on Kubernetes and Crossplane – that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit www.upbound.io.
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