Customer Marketing & Community Lead

Playground is working to make excellent child care accessible to all. Playground has built best-in-class software to manage all aspects of running a child care business. We believe that providers should focus on providing incredible child care — the kind of work that only people can do — and that software should manage the rest. We’re building the child care management platform that eliminates the administrative work of running a center.

Playground is at an inflection point — and poised to grow extremely fast. We have raised millions of dollars secured several statewide contracts and are working with thousands of schools across the country. Additionally our founders were recently honored as Forbes 30 Under 30.

We are a team of owners who are not afraid to dive into large complex projects. If you are excited by the prospect of building from the ground up and joining a collaborative high-growth startup — we’d love to meet you.

You’d be joining as one of Playground’s first five marketing hires which means no established playbook no inherited clunk and no ceiling on what you can build. What exists today is a product customers genuinely love strong company momentum and a real opportunity to define what marketing looks like at one of the fastest-growing companies in early childhood education.

Marketing at Playground is a growth and revenue function. We don’t run campaigns for awareness alone or invest in brand for the sake of narrative. Everything we do has a measurable outcome and every marketer carries a revenue goal. For the right person that clarity is energizing — you always know what winning looks like.

We’re looking for marketers with deep expertise in one or two disciplines who can also think strategically structure their own work and build something net new from scratch. We value analytical thinkers who are curious enough to experiment and creative enough to make those experiments land. At the end of the day we care about results not org charts.

As the Customer Marketing & Community Lead at Playground you will make customers our most credible marketing channel and build a community of practice around our product. You will design and run advocacy and referral programs from scratch produce user spotlights and case studies that turn real usage into proof and build high-touch executive programs that deepen relationships with our most strategic accounts.

On the community side you will operate organic social as a two-way relationship channel — engaging directly with users hosting conversations and creating the spaces where our customers gather. You will serve as the voice of the customer internally shaping messaging and product positioning while directly contributing to demand generation through referrals advocacy and customer-led growth.

This role is based in New York City and is full-time.

• Own this function’s contribution to demand generation pipeline including referrals advocate-driven inbound reference calls and case studies

• Build and manage the metrics framework connecting advocacy referrals and community to acquisition engagement and expansion

• Design and run high-touch executive programs including Customer Advisory Board Executive Briefings early access programs and customer reference networks

• Operate organic social as a true community channel through active engagement in comments DMs and relevant groups

• Build and moderate community spaces (Slack LinkedIn groups or similar) and run consistent programming such as AMAs office hours and roundtables

• Design and launch a formal customer referral program with clear incentives attribution and measurable pipeline impact

• Develop showcase award or competition programs to highlight customer use cases and success stories

• Feed voice-of-customer insights into company messaging and product positioning in partnership with leadership

• Build and scale a structured customer advocacy program including named advocates recognition systems and content participation

• Source and interview customers and collaborate with creative teams to produce case studies spotlights and community-driven content

• 6+ years of experience in customer marketing advocacy community marketing or executive customer programs ideally within B2B SaaS

• Proven experience building or scaling customer-facing programs from scratch

• Highly self-directed and comfortable operating in a fast-moving unstructured environment

• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to tie community and advocacy efforts to measurable business outcomes

• Experience designing and running advocacy or referral programs with clear pipeline or retention impact

• Hands-on community management experience not just overseeing external partners

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage customers executives and internal stakeholders

• Strong writing and content production skills with a hands-on approach to storytelling and execution

• Experience building a practitioner community (online or in-person) from the ground up

• Experience running “built with X”-style customer content programs

• Experience managing a Customer Advisory Board or Executive Briefing Center

• Background in video podcast or live content production

Base salary: $140000 – $170000

Job level and compensation will be determined based on individual qualifications experience and scope of the role.

• Competitive salary + equity

• 3 weeks PTO

• Health vision and dental benefits

• $1200 annual education stipend

• Free daily lunch

• New MacBook

• Collaborative high-growth environment with strong ownership and autonomy

• Opportunity to directly impact a mission-driven company transforming child care

If you’re excited to build a customer-led growth engine and create a thriving community from the ground up we’d love to hear from you.

Learn more about Playground and our founders here: https://www.tryplayground.com/about

What We Do

For too long child care programs have been stuck with clunky tools and manual processes falling behind while other industries get all the high-tech toys.Playground is flipping the script. Playground is a proven platform for child care providers to streamline their operations reclaim their time and get back to the joy of teaching and caring. Our all-in-one child care management software manages billing attendance registration and enrollment communication paperwork payroll and more.

Why Work With Us

At Playground we’re a mission-driven high-growth startup where collaboration creativity and entrepreneurial thinking fuel everything we do. We act like owners take initiative and make smart decisions independently every day. Join us to make an impact grow fast and be part of a team that truly values your ideas energy and drive.

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