Director, Paid Marketing - Subscription (US Remote)

Who We Are Hi, we're DuckDuckGo , the online protection company and remote-first team of 400+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, our annual revenue is in the hundreds of millions USD and millions use our browser on Mac , Windows , iOS , and Android , our search engine , and the DuckDuckGo subscription . We also offer private, useful, and optional AI, including Duck.ai , which lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AIs, all in one place. Our culture of trust, inclusivity, and empowered project management underpins everything we do, where each team member takes full ownership of their projects, from scoping and execution to postmortem. If you're seeking end-to-end ownership of your work, you've come to the right place! Your Team and Role As a Director, Paid Marketing, working on the Marketing & Communications team, you’ll be a strategic leader responsible for building and scaling a profitable paid subscriber acquisition program and related projects. Partnering closely with marketing, product, design, user insights, data science and finance teams, you will own KPI development, campaign strategy, budget and resource allocation, and performance measurement. You'll lead strategic roadmapping, prioritize high-impact projects, resource cross-functional teams, and ensure marketing performance is measured with a high degree of confidence. The right person is excited to prove that paid marketing growth and privacy-respecting advertising practices aren’t at odds — they’re our edge. You know how to use aggregate measurement, experimentation, and strong judgment rather than user-level targeting and tracking. Example projects include: • Leading the development of and alignment around a break-even model that defines a profitable CPA • Planning integrated campaigns and securing buy-in to drive profitable paid subscriber growth • Designing and executing rapid testing cycles to identify and scale successful tactics About You • 10+ years of professional experience, including 4+ years in a senior leadership role driving profitable app subscription growth (ideally 1M+ subscribers). • Deep strategic expertise with a strong hands-on understanding of marketing channels (e.g., app store ads, paid social, mobile app networks), integrated campaign planning and execution, performance measurement, audience alignment, and creative best practices. • Proven track record of launching paid app subscription acquisition programs from the ground up, including setting cost-per-subscription targets, developing media plans, establishing measurement frameworks, and shaping creative and messaging. • Experience working at a consumer-facing tech company with a meaningful US user base (ideally 10M+ MAUs) and multiple products. • Skill in developing others, not just directing them, with demonstrated improvements in collaboration, expertise, productivity, and business impact. • Ability to apply first-principles thinking to break down ambiguous growth opportunities, challenge assumptions, identify the key drivers, and turn them into focused, achievable initiatives. • Comfort working in resource-constrained orgs where opportunity cost and impact are key drivers for prioritization and resource allocation. • High capability in analytics and measurement, including app economics (payback, LTV), incrementality/lift testing, modeling, and data analysis. • Excellent communication skills — you can clearly articulate recommendations and rationale, verbally and in writing, at all organizational levels. • Willingness to use AI and build effective workflows, accelerating work through AI agents. Compensation Compensation is transparent across the organization, and all team members within the sam