Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Growth Lead

🎯 Role Definition

The Growth Lead is a senior, cross-functional operator responsible for driving scalable user acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization through a blend of data-driven marketing, product experiments, and GTM execution. This role sits at the intersection of marketing, product, analytics, and revenue, owning the growth roadmap, experimentation platform, and KPI framework (CAC, LTV, ROAS, activation, retention, churn). The ideal candidate is highly analytical, hands-on with paid and organic channels, experienced with A/B testing and funnel optimization, and comfortable leading cross-functional teams and vendors to hit aggressive growth targets.

Keywords: Growth Lead, growth marketing, user acquisition, retention, experimentation, A/B testing, CRO, product-led growth, lifecycle marketing, growth analytics.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Growth Manager / Senior Growth Manager
Head of Performance Marketing or Paid Acquisition
Product Manager with growth/analytics focus

Advancement To:

Head of Growth / Director of Growth
VP of Growth or VP of Marketing
Chief Growth Officer / General Manager (P&L)

Lateral Moves:

Product Lead (Product-Led Growth)
Head of Revenue Operations / CRM
Analytics / Data Science Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own the end-to-end growth strategy and roadmap: define north-star metrics, prioritize growth experiments across acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization, and ensure alignment with company OKRs and revenue goals.
Design and execute high-impact multi-channel user acquisition campaigns (paid search, paid social, programmatic, display, affiliate, partnerships) to sustainably scale paid CAC and ROAS targets.
Lead product growth experiments and conversion rate optimization (CRO) by framing hypotheses, running rigorous A/B tests and multi-variant experiments, and shipping product/UX changes that improve activation and retention metrics.
Build, analyze, and iterate on funnel metrics (acquisition → activation → retention → referral → revenue); own funnel health, conversion opportunities, and prioritized growth backlog informed by cohort analysis.
Implement measurement and attribution frameworks (incrementality testing, multi-touch attribution, media mix modeling) to accurately measure channel performance and optimize spend across channels.
Implement and maintain experimentation infrastructure and analytics tooling (A/B testing platforms, feature flags, analytics events), ensuring experiments are statistically sound and experiments/rollouts are documented and reproducible.
Partner with Product and Engineering to scope and deliver product changes that improve key lifecycle metrics (onboarding flows, activation, feature discoverability, pricing experiments).
Drive lifecycle and CRM marketing (segmented onboarding, activation flows, churn prevention, win-back campaigns) using marketing automation platforms (e.g., Braze, HubSpot, Klaviyo) to increase retention and LTV.
Own paid media budgets and forecasting: set channel-specific KPIs, manage daily/weekly pacing, negotiate with media partners and agencies, and reallocate spend for maximum ROI.
Lead cross-functional growth sprints: coordinate with design, content, analytics, and engineering to rapidly deliver experiments and campaign creative optimized for conversion and scalability.
Conduct deep-dive analytics and cohort analyses to surface root causes for performance trends, customer behavior patterns, and long-term value signals; translate insights into prioritized experiments.
Develop and maintain dashboards and reporting for growth metrics (CAC, LTV, ARPU, churn, retention curves) and present clear narratives to executive stakeholders and the board.
Design and scale customer referral and viral growth programs that leverage product hooks and incentives to drive organic acquisition and lower blended CAC.
Run pricing and packaging experiments, including value metric testing, free/paid mix, discounting strategies, and feature gating to improve ARPU and monetization conversion.
Drive SEO and content-led acquisition strategies in partnership with content/SEO teams, ensuring product and landing pages are optimized for discoverability, conversion, and organic funnel growth.
Lead user research and voice-of-customer initiatives (surveys, interviews, usability tests) to validate hypotheses, reduce churn drivers, and inform product-led growth opportunities.
Establish hiring, mentoring, and people development practices for the growth team: recruiting growth marketers, analysts, and experiment owners, and setting career development plans.
Manage relationships with external vendors, growth agencies, analytics partners, and influencer/affiliate networks to supplement internal capabilities and accelerate performance.
Operate as the primary owner of growth OKRs, communicate progress frequently, and course-correct quickly when metrics deviate from goals.
Execute go-to-market plans for new features and product launches with a growth lens: launch experiments, paid amplification, onboarding flows, and retention hooks to maximize adoption and revenue.
Maintain compliance and privacy best practices across acquisition and analytics (GDPR, CCPA) while optimizing for measurement and marketing effectiveness.
Create repeatable playbooks for high-performing channels (paid social, search, partnerships), enabling the team to scale successful tactics consistently across markets.
Optimize onboarding funnels and activation touchpoints through personalized experiences, product tours, and cross-channel messaging to increase user activation rates and shorten time-to-value.
Coordinate international growth efforts: localize campaigns, test channel mixes by market, and scale the playbook for new geographic expansions.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc analytics requests for executive leadership and product teams to inform strategic decisions and board-level updates.
Contribute to the organization’s growth data strategy, including events taxonomy, attribution schema, and experimentation governance.
Collaborate with business units to translate growth hypotheses into engineering and product requirements, including instrumentation and QA of experiments.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to ensure growth initiatives are delivered on time and with measurable outcomes.
Assist in quarterly planning, budget allocation, and ROI modeling for cross-functional growth investments.
Provide training and evangelize experimentation best practices across marketing, product, and customer success teams.
Audit existing tracking, analytics, and CRO implementations to identify gaps and technical debt that limit growth velocity.
Support customer success and sales with activation campaigns and upsell strategies to improve conversion to paid and expansion revenue.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced proficiency in quantitative analysis and SQL for cohort, funnel, and LTV/CAC analyses.
Hands-on experience running A/B tests and experimentation using platforms like Optimizely, VWO, Firebase, or in-house tooling with robust statistical rigor.
Deep understanding of paid acquisition channels (Facebook/Meta Ads, Google Ads, programmatic, DSPs), channel optimization, and budget management.
Proven experience with analytics and BI tools (GA4, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Looker, Tableau, Mode) to build dashboards and derive insights.
Strong knowledge of CRM and lifecycle platforms (Braze, Customer.io, HubSpot, Klaviyo) to build personalized onboarding and retention flows.
Familiarity with attribution, incrementality testing, and media mix modeling to evaluate channel effectiveness.
Basic scripting or data manipulation skills in Python, R, or advanced Excel for data wrangling and statistical analysis.
Experience with SEO/ASO best practices and content marketing strategies to drive organic growth and funnel optimization.
Competence in product analytics and event modeling: designing tracking plans, ensuring data quality and instrumentation.
Experience with marketing automation, email deliverability, and segmented campaign design to drive retention and reactivation.
Comfortable using experimentation governance tools and feature flagging platforms to control rollouts and mitigate risk.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker with ability to translate high-level business objectives into prioritized growth experiments and tactical roadmaps.
Strong communicator who can present complex analyses and experiment results to executives and cross-functional teams with clarity.
Data-driven decision maker with a high degree of curiosity, skepticism, and an empirical mindset.
Excellent stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills; able to influence without formal authority.
High bias for action: comfortable operating in ambiguous environments, moving quickly, iterating, and learning from failure.
Leadership and people management experience: hiring, mentoring, and scaling small growth teams.
Strong project management and prioritization skills to balance experiments, campaigns, and product work.
Customer-obsessed mindset with ability to synthesize qualitative feedback into measurable product and growth initiatives.
Negotiation and vendor management skills to get the best ROI from agencies, platforms, and partner relationships.
Resilience and adaptability: thrives in a fast-paced startup or high-growth environment while maintaining attention to detail.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Economics, Computer Science, Statistics, or related quantitative field.

Preferred Education:

MBA, Master’s in Data Science, Statistics, or equivalent advanced degree is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Marketing, Business Administration, Economics
Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science
Behavioral Science, Psychology (for experimentation and CRO)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

5–10 years of experience in growth, performance marketing, product growth, or analytics.

Preferred:

7+ years of direct experience owning growth programs or leading growth teams in consumer or B2B SaaS environments.
Demonstrated track record of scaling acquisition and retention channels, improving LTV/CAC ratios, and delivering measurable revenue growth.
Prior experience managing paid media budgets (e.g., $500K+ monthly or equivalent annual spend) and owning P&L or growth OKRs.
Experience working with cross-functional product and engineering teams to ship experiments and instrument analytics at scale.