Traffic (User Acquisition) Team Lead

About ScholarshipOwl ScholarshipOwl is the largest scholarship marketplace in the U.S., connecting over 14 million Gen Z students with private scholarships — and the brands that power them. Our mission is to make education financing more accessible and engaging, while giving brands a way to connect with the next generation. We’re powered by AI technology that simplifies scholarship discovery, streamlines the application process, and delivers measurable results for both students and partners. Whether it’s helping students secure funding or enabling brands to run impactful campaigns, we’re reshaping how education is funded — and discovered. The Role We are seeking an analytical, hands-on Traffic Team Lead / User Acquisition Team Lead to take full ownership of scaling user acquisition across paid (PPC) and partner (Affiliate) channels. In this player-coach role, you will manage, develop, and coach a dedicated team of PPC and Affiliate Managers while maintaining direct involvement in campaign mechanics, tracking architecture, and partner economics. Your role is to elevate the profitability, scalability, and predictability of our multi-channel traffic acquisition. If you are an experienced performance marketer who loves diving deep into funnel economics, diagnosing attribution leaks, catching traffic fraud, and mentoring high-output teams, this role is built for you. What You’ll Do - Team Leadership & Coaching: Act as a hands-on "player-coach," mentoring the Affiliate and PPC team while setting clear KPIs, testing roadmaps, and accountability standards. - Team Development: Conduct structured performance reviews with each team member and ensure clear ownership of priorities and deliverables. - Stakeholder Communication: Update adjacent team leads and relevant stakeholders on performance, risks, opportunities, and changes to projections. - Budget & Strategy Ownership: Manage and dynamically allocate multi-channel acquisition budgets across PPC and Affiliate networks based on real-time CAC, ROAS, and LTV. - Channel Optimization: Guide the team's daily execution—from PPC bidding and creative testing to negotiating high-leverage affiliate deals and scaling new traffic sources. - Unit Economics & Forecasting: Own the math behind customer acquisition, monitoring full-funnel conversion rates, payback periods, and delivering accurate weekly forecasts. - Data Integrity & Fraud Triage: Maintain strict attribution accuracy across tracking platforms (GA4, Mixpanel, TUNE, etc.) and aggressively eliminate click fraud, bot traffic, and budget waste.