About the Role
This role offers a unique chance to collaborate directly with founders, shape company growth, and make a tangible impact. As the first marketing hire, you will build the acquisition function from the ground up, with no existing channel mix, historical data, or playbook to follow. You will then help expand the team around it.
Responsibilities
- Establish paid user acquisition from scratch
- Select channels, create media plans, design test structures, and define budget logic
- Identify effective strategies and tactics
- Optimize across geographies, channels, creatives, and audiences
- Manage MMP setup, attribution, cohorts, CAC, ROAS, and LTV
- Direct creative development initially, then hire a creative producer and set up the production pipeline
- Handle store and platform moderation
Requirements
- At least 4 years of experience in paid user acquisition for mobile consumer products
- Proven buying experience in Japan or broader Asia (Japan/Korea)
- Experience managing significant advertising budgets
- Hands-on experience with mobile ad networks such as AppLovin, Unity, Moloco, Mintegral, and Liftoff
- Creative-driven buying experience on Meta and TikTok, owning the full pipeline beyond just account management
- Working knowledge of Google App Campaigns
- Ability to prioritize cohort analysis over spend data and willingness to shut down underperforming campaigns
- Understanding of global consumer culture and trend movements
- Proficiency in working English
Nice to Have
- Background in gaming or entertainment is a strong advantage
- Experience with Apple Search Ads and Japanese platforms like LINE Ads and Yahoo! Japan is a strong indicator, though not all are expected
- Knowledge of Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian, as these are the internal team languages
Benefits
- Remote work across Europe with a Warsaw hub; coworking costs covered wherever you are
- 29 days of paid leave annually
- Care bonus to spend on benefits that matter to you
- Any hardware you need
- Join a small, experienced team with a product that has no existing template
- Launch your first campaign within weeks of joining, not quarters
Work Arrangement
Remote (Worldwide) — Europe, Warsaw hub
About us
We're building Animates — an AI companion app. Not a chatbot. Not a waifu app. A companion who remembers what you told them three weeks ago, notices you're off before you say so, and is still there on your laptop when you close your phone. They have a face. They look at you when you speak. They react in real time. All of it rests on one thing: our own animation model, running locally on-device. We have a live product and a community that found us on their own. What we don't have yet is paid acquisition. That's the job.
About the role
Joining us at this stage is a unique opportunity to work directly with the founders, shape the company's growth, and make a real impact. As we scale, your growth scales with us. We value expertise, embrace initiative, and empower you to make decisions and showcase your skills. Our decision-making process is fast and efficient, giving you the freedom to contribute meaningfully and drive results. You're the first marketing hire in the company. There is no channel mix to inherit, no historical dashboard to read, no playbook to follow. You build the acquisition function — and then you help us build the team around it.
What you'd own
Paid UA from zero. Channel selection, media plan, test structure, budget logic. You decide what we try first and why. Finding what works. Geo × channel × creative × audience. The numbers. MMP setup, attribution, cohorts, CAC / ROAS / LTV. Including the part where you tell us the math doesn't converge. Creative direction. You'd brief it yourself at first, and later help us hire a dedicated creative producer and set up the production pipeline together. Store and platform moderation. AI companions sit in a sensitive category almost everywhere. Navigating that is part of the job here.
How we work
You'd work directly with the founders — that's where direction is set, and decisions are made, usually in the same conversation. No layers, no approval queues. You bring a hypothesis, we fund it, or we park it, and you move on. Budgets follow the math. Tests start small; once the unit economics hold, scale isn't the constraint. We're a pre-PMF company, and we're honest about what that means: some hypotheses won't survive contact with reality, priorities can shift, and not everything will be figured out when you arrive. If that sounds like a reason to say no, we understand. If it sounds like the interesting part, we'd like to talk.
What we're looking for
We know this list describes more than one person's ideal career path. We'd rather tell you what the job actually needs and let you decide where you land — if you're strong on most of it and curious about the rest, apply. 4+ years in paid UA on mobile consumer products. Gaming or entertainment is a strong plus. Buying experience in Japan, or across Asia more broadly (Japan / Korea). This is the one that matters most to us. Experience running meaningful budgets. We're not looking for a specific number, but we do want someone who has been through a scale, not only through tests. Mobile ad networks (AppLovin, Unity, Moloco, Mintegral, Liftoff) — hands-on. This is where most of the volume in our category lives, especially in Asia. Meta and TikTok — creative-driven buying, where you've owned the pipeline and not only the account. Google App Campaigns as a working baseline. Apple Search Ads and Japanese platforms (LINE Ads, Yahoo! Japan) — a strong signal, though we don't expect all of it. You read cohorts before you read spend, and you're comfortable killing your own campaigns. A feel for global consumer culture and where trends move. We build for the US, Japan, and Korea, and a media buyer who only reads Western taste will miss half the room. Working English. Plus Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian — that's how the team talks internally today. If you have deep Asian market experience but a narrower channel mix — or a strong channel mix and one market you opened from scratch — we'd still like to hear from you.
What we offer
Remote across Europe, Warsaw hub — coworking covered wherever you are. 29 days of paid leave. Care bonus to spend on benefits that matter to you. Any hardware you want. A small team that has done this before, and a product with no precedent to copy. Your first campaign live within weeks of joining, not quarters.
Other
- Working English
- Plus Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian — that's how the team talks internally today
- Remote across Europe, Warsaw hub — coworking covered wherever you are
- 29 days of paid leave
- Care bonus to spend on benefits that matter to you
- Any hardware you want
