Chief Marketing Officer

Real opportunities. Real impact. Your career, redefined.

(NOTE: A human reviews every application at Oceans, so please apply for only one position and only once a year—if you're a better fit for another role, we’ll route your application accordingly and if we’re not quite ready for you, we’ll reach back out later.)

At Oceans, we help the best and brightest of Sri Lanka to take advantage of opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them, while supporting entrepreneurs around the world. Our community (we call them Divers) don’t do surface work—they go deep to solve complex challenges and make a real impact. And in doing so, they support bold ideas, expand their skills, broaden their expertise, and grow their careers, all without having to leave family and friends.

As the Chief Marketing Officer, you will own the marketing and growth strategy for an early-stage direct-to-consumer subscription business, helping build the brand, acquisition engine, and go-to-market model from the ground up. You'll work closely with the founders and leadership team to shape market positioning, drive subscriber growth, build creator and community-led acquisition, strengthen retention and customer lifetime value, and establish the marketing foundation required to scale across markets.

This is a leadership role with a distinctly hands-on mandate. Rather than setting strategy and delegating execution to a large team, you'll be expected to determine where and how the business should grow, then roll up your sleeves to build the campaigns, partnerships, systems, processes, and measurement frameworks that bring that strategy to life. As the function matures, you'll evolve from individual execution into building and leading the broader marketing organization.

Here's how you'll make an impact:

Accountability

Marketing Strategy & Leadership

• Own the overall marketing strategy and growth agenda in partnership with the founders and leadership team.
• Translate company goals into clear marketing priorities, channel strategies, investment decisions, and measurable outcomes.
• Establish the marketing vision, operating rhythm, and strategic roadmap for the business.
• Balance long-term brand building with near-term subscriber acquisition and commercial performance.
• Identify the capabilities, resources, and investments required to support the company's growth trajectory.
• Serve as the senior marketing voice in company-wide strategic and commercial decisions.

Brand Strategy & Positioning

• Own and evolve the brand positioning, voice, messaging, and consumer narrative.
• Build a differentiated premium brand within a trust-sensitive consumer category.
• Translate the company's mission and value proposition into compelling consumer-facing messaging.
• Establish messaging frameworks that can scale across channels and geographic markets.
• Maintain consistency across paid, organic, creator, lifecycle, community, and customer touchpoints.
• Ensure brand development strengthens both customer trust and commercial performance.

Subscriber Acquisition & Growth

• Own the customer acquisition strategy across paid, organic, creator-led, affiliate, and community channels.
• Determine channel priorities and allocate marketing investment based on performance, growth potential, and customer economics.
• Own subscriber acquisition performance and continuously improve customer acquisition economics.
• Identify, test, and validate new growth opportunities and channels.
• Develop a repeatable acquisition model that can support expansion into additional markets.
• Connect acquisition performance to downstream retention, customer quality, and lifetime value.

Creator, Influencer & Community Growth

• Build the creator and influencer growth strategy from the ground up.
• Identify and evaluate creators who align with the brand and target customer.
• Develop creator partnerships, affiliate relationships, campaigns, and measurement frameworks.
• Personally manage key creator relationships and outreach during the early stages of the function.
• Establish repeatable systems for sourcing, briefing, tracking, and evaluating creator performance.
• Develop creator and community activity into a meaningful acquisition and retention channel rather than treating it solely as brand awareness.

Paid Acquisition

• Own the strategic direction and investment approach across relevant paid acquisition channels.
• Evaluate channel allocation, acquisition economics, and growth opportunities.
• Oversee campaign setup, creative requirements, QA, testing, and optimization.
• Monitor CAC, ROAS, subscriber conversion, and downstream customer quality.
• Use performance data to determine where to increase, reduce, or redirect marketing investment.
• Work with internal or external specialists where appropriate while retaining executive accountability for results.

Lifecycle, Retention & Customer Value

• Own the customer lifecycle strategy across onboarding, engagement, retention, churn prevention, and win-back.
• Develop email and SMS programs using platforms such as Klaviyo.
• Build subscriber onboarding and nurture journeys that strengthen customer relationships.
• Develop retention, churn reduction, referral, and loyalty initiatives.
• Use behavioral and lifecycle segmentation to improve customer engagement.
• Increase repeat purchase, retention, and subscriber lifetime value.
• Establish a structured test-and-learn approach to customer lifecycle performance.

Conversion & Customer Journey

• Own the customer journey from initial acquisition through subscription and ongoing engagement.
• Identify friction across landing pages, offers, checkout, and subscription flows.
• Develop and prioritize conversion improvements based on customer and performance data.
• Work across the Shopify and subscription technology stack to improve the purchase experience.
• Ensure acquisition investment translates into high-quality customers and sustainable subscription growth.
• Build a culture of continuous experimentation across the customer funnel.

Marketing Analytics & Commercial Performance

• Establish the measurement framework for the marketing function and broader growth engine.
• Track CAC, LTV, subscriber conversion, retention, churn, ROAS, and channel performance.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of paid, organic, creator, lifecycle, and community programs.
• Translate marketing performance into clear commercial recommendations and investment decisions.
• Identify trends, opportunities, and risks across the customer funnel.
• Provide leadership with clear visibility into marketing performance, efficiency, and growth potential.

Marketing Operations & Execution

• Build the operating infrastructure required for a high-performing marketing function.
• Establish campaign calendars, workflows, processes, timelines, QA standards, and reporting rhythms.
• Coordinate content and campaign production across internal and external resources.
• Maintain oversight of the Shopify, subscription, CRM, and broader marketing technology ecosystem.
• Ensure campaigns and initiatives launch accurately, efficiently, and on schedule.
• Build scalable processes that reduce reliance on founder-driven or ad hoc execution.
• Remain directly involved in campaign development, optimization, reporting, and execution while the function is lean.

Multi-Market GTM & Function Building

• Develop a repeatable marketing and go-to-market playbook for geographic expansion.
• Determine which acquisition, community, brand, and lifecycle approaches can be replicated across markets.
• Adapt positioning, messaging, and channel strategies where market or regulatory differences require it.
• Establish the systems, processes, and capabilities needed to scale the marketing function.
• Identify future marketing leadership and specialist hiring needs.
• Build and lead a high-performing marketing team as the business grows.
• Evolve the marketing organization from a lean, hands-on function into a scalable growth engine.

Colleagues

You'll work closely with the company's founders and leadership team, acting as the senior marketing owner across brand, growth, acquisition, retention, and go-to-market strategy. You'll also coordinate with creators, influencers, marketing specialists, external partners, and other resources supporting growth. As the function develops, you'll be responsible for building the team and creating an environment where marketing can scale effectively.

At Oceans Talent, you'll also receive guidance and support from your Operations Manager, who will help you succeed in the role and ensure that you're continuously growing and developing in your career.

Skills and Qualifications

As a Chief Marketing Officer, your vertical focus will be on marketing strategy, brand leadership, DTC growth, and commercial performance, while your horizontal focus will include acquisition, lifecycle marketing, analytics, creator growth, conversion optimization, marketing operations, GTM, and AI-enabled execution.

• Experience: 8+ years of experience across growth marketing, brand marketing, marketing leadership, or related disciplines, with significant ownership of acquisition, retention, and commercial outcomes.
• Executive Marketing Leadership: Demonstrated ability to own marketing strategy, make independent investment decisions, and connect marketing activity to broader business objectives.
• DTC & Subscription Growth: Strong experience building and scaling direct-to-consumer or subscription growth programs.
• Acquisition: Demonstrated experience across both paid and organic acquisition, with a strong understanding of channel economics.
• Lifecycle Marketing: Hands-on experience developing email, SMS, retention, churn reduction, referral, loyalty, and LTV programs.
• Creator & Influencer Growth: Proven experience building or scaling creator, influencer, affiliate, or community-led acquisition programs.
• Brand Strategy: Strong judgment in positioning, messaging, voice, and premium consumer brand development.
• Marketing Analytics: Strong understanding of CAC, LTV, retention, churn, ROAS, conversion, and channel performance, with the ability to turn data into commercial decisions.
• Go-to-Market: Experience developing repeatable GTM strategies and scaling marketing across multiple markets or customer segments.
• Marketing Operations: Ability to build the systems, processes, workflows, and infrastructure required to scale a marketing function from a relatively blank slate.
• Hands-On Execution: Comfortable personally building, managing, analyzing, and optimizing marketing programs while the function remains lean.
• Team Building: Ability to identify future capabilities, hire effectively, and develop a high-performing marketing team as the business scales.
• Startup & Build-from-Zero Experience: Comfortable operating with ambiguity, limited infrastructure, and minimal hand-holding.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal English, with the ability to communicate clearly across strategic, creative, analytical, operational, and executive contexts.
• AI Fluency: Strong proficiency with AI tools and willingness to incorporate tools such as Claude into research, analysis, campaign development, content workflows, and marketing operations.

During the interview process, you'll have the opportunity to showcase your skills in the following areas:

• Marketing Strategy & Executive Leadership: Your ability to develop and own a marketing strategy, set priorities, lead a marketing function, and connect marketing activity to broader business goals.
• DTC Growth & Customer Acquisition: Your ability to build and optimize acquisition strategies across paid, organic, and other growth channels while balancing customer acquisition costs, conversion, and sustainable growth.
• Brand Strategy & Positioning: Your ability to shape a distinctive brand, translate positioning into effective marketing, and ensure consistency across channels, audiences, and customer touchpoints.
• Creator, Influencer & Community Growth: Your ability to develop creator and influencer partnerships, build engaged communities, and turn these relationships into meaningful and measurable growth.
• Lifecycle, Retention & Customer Value: Your ability to develop lifecycle strategies that improve engagement, retention, conversion, and customer lifetime value across the customer journey.
• Marketing Analytics, Commercial Decision-Making & Execution: Your ability to use marketing and commercial data to make decisions, identify opportunities, prioritize resources, and remain hands-on in executing and improving marketing initiatives.

Diversity of experience is core to Oceans. You are expected to work inclusively with individuals from a variety of backgrounds, ensuring that both personal and collective dignity are supported.

Role Specifications

This is a remote role, where you will be expected to work a split shift with some overlap with our client’s time zone. You will, however, be expected to be present for in-person training programs during your first 3.5 weeks with us. During the offer process, we’ll share more information about our benefits and compensation philosophy, considering both market trends and individual factors.

About Oceans

At Oceans Talent, we connect the world’s top talent with visionary companies building what’s next. Here, you’re not just stepping into another role — you’re joining a team that values individuality, ambition, and growth without limits. Unique, like you.

We’re always excited to share more about our journey, where we’re headed, and how you can grow with us throughout the interview process.

Want to learn more about our recruitment process, what to expect from interviews, and possible outcomes? Check out [The Dive].