Founding Growth Marketing Lead

About Parkes:

Helps you run your firm. Not your returns.

Parkes takes on the business side of an accounting firm so partners and staff can stay on client work. It finds the work a firm is doing for free and prices it, collects money already earned, cleans up client lists across every system, and gets a new remote hire ready before day one. It needs no prompt training: it is useful from the first ask, and nothing goes out until the firm approves it.

We are a new company with an unfair start. Parkes is built by the makers of Ignition, whichhas served accounting firms for about ten years and roughly 9,000 customers. We bring that domain depth and community with us. The product and the brand we are building from zero. Parkes is its own company, built with accountants, and works with whatever a firm already runs on: Ignition, QuickBooks, Xero, Karbon, XPM, Gmail, Slack, Teams, Asana, Google Drive and more.

Most accountants want to use AI. Very few know where to start. That gap is our market, and education is how we close it.

The Role: Own how firms find us, sign up, and tell their peers:

Turn accountants' curiosity about AI into Parkes sign-ups, and firms telling their peers, by publishing the most useful AI education in the profession, every single day.

You own the top of the funnel: awareness, acquisition, viral and referral loops, and the full content loop. That means what we say, making it, getting it seen, and proving which pieces turn into qualified sign-ups. Our product team owns what happens after sign-up: activation, use cases and retention. You will work closely with them, with the founders, and with our earliest customers, who are your best source of stories.

What You'll Do: Build a growth engine that never stops:

• Make the product the content: Film Parkes doing real firm work: catching scope creep and pricing it, chasing overdue invoices, cleaning up a client list, onboarding a new hire. Show the finished output, not a feature list. Before-and-after beats any explainer.

• Build the "start here" library for AI in accounting: Playbooks, prompt packs, templates, workflow teardowns, a free email course and simple calculators (hours back per staff member). Built to rank in search and to be cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI answers, so it becomes the default answer when an accountant asks how to begin.

• Turn customers into the channel: Capture wins as clips, posts and case studies within days, and make it easy for firm owners to share their own "I hired Parkes" stories. Launch and run a peer-invite and referral program. Build a public showcase of the jobs and playbooks firms have run with Parkes, filterable so visitors find firms like theirs.

• Build the brand, not just the library: Give Parkes a clear point of view and a personality as a coworker, and show proof of momentum: firms hiring Parkes, hours given back, dated numbers.

• Ghostwrite and amplify the founders and team: Founder-led posts on LinkedIn are a core channel. You draft, they sharpen, everyone ships.

• React fast: When a new model, IRS update or industry story lands, publish a useful take for firms within hours, not weeks. Keep a response kit ready for when others in the space ship their own AI agents and playbooks.

• Co-market with partners: Create co-branded content and campaigns with practitioner creators and industry associations as they join the Parkes marketplace.

• Plan around the accounting calendar: Teach and acquire in the quieter months. During busy season (January to mid-April) and extension deadlines (September and October), ship short, practical help that saves time right now.

• Measure and cut: Tag everything, attribute sign-ups to content and channels, double down on what converts and kill what doesn't.

How You'll Work: AI is your team:

• You get the output of a five-person team by building systems, not by hiring one. We sell an AI coworker. You should be the best proof in the building that the model works.

• Systems over one-offs: A brand-voice guide and prompt library everyone uses. A repurposing pipeline that turns one recorded session into a long video, five clips, three posts, a carousel and a newsletter section. Agents that watch accounting and AI news and hand you a draft take each morning.

• Your stack is your choice: Expect daily use of LLMs for research and drafting (Claude, ChatGPT), AI video and audio editing (Descript, Opus Clip or similar), design tools (Canva, Figma, Gamma) and no-code automation (Zapier, Make or n8n). You will also run your own work through Parkes.

• Taste is the job: AI makes content cheap, so generic content is worthless. Every piece must be accurate, specific to how firms actually run, and teach something a staff accountant can use today. You fact-check tax and accounting claims and kill anything that reads like slop.

• Small bets, fast: Ship, read the numbers within a week, iterate. A small paid budget exists to test which organic winners and acquisition plays deserve more.

• Show your work: Document your workflows so they outlast you, and share how you build. That is content too.
  

What Success Looks Like:

1. First 30 Days: Learn the customer: sit in on calls, talk to ten firm owners and staff, use Parkes on real work. Ship daily from week two. Stand up the voice guide, tool stack and tracking.

2. By Day 60: The repurposing pipeline runs. The newsletter and weekly long-form video are live. Two customer stories are out. You know which three formats drive sign-ups, and the referral program design is agreed.

3. By Day 90: The "start here" library has its first five assets. A live session runs every two weeks. The referral program is live. You present a busy-season plan with targets you set and own.

4. In year one, content and referrals are our biggest source of sign-ups.

Who You Are: A Builder:

• A public body of work you made yourself: accounts, a channel, a newsletter or campaigns you grew, with numbers to show for it.

• Experience growing a product from zero to its first thousands of users.

• 4+ years in content, growth or social marketing, ideally at a B2B SaaS or AI startup selling to SMBs or professionals.

• Daily, hands-on AI fluency. Show us the workflows, agents and automations you have built, not just the tools you have tried.

• Strong writing and on-camera comfort. You can explain a complex workflow in 60 seconds without jargon.

• A bias to ship. You would rather publish today and fix tomorrow than polish for a week.

• Comfort with numbers: UTMs, attribution, funnels, and the judgment to act on them.

• Nice to haves:

  • You have worked in or marketed to accounting, bookkeeping, tax or other professional services firms. A CPA, EA or firm background is a real advantage.

  • You have built a LinkedIn audience in a B2B niche.

  • You have run a referral, community, ambassador or creator program.

This is not the role if you want to manage a team, brief an agency, or need a large budget to do your best work.

Our hiring process
We use AI-enabled tools in parts of our recruiting process, including assisting in scheduling and interview note-taking. Our hiring team reviews AI-generated outputs and is accountable for hiring decisions.

We welcome applicants who meet many of the qualifications, even if they don’t meet every one. We value diverse experiences and perspectives.

Ignition is an equal opportunity employer. If you need an accommodation during the recruitment process or materials in another format, contact careers@parkes.ai.