Manager, Influencer Marketing

Relay is a digital banking platform that gives self-made business owners the tools and know-how to be great with money—bringing clarity, confidence, and control to every dollar earned, so they can turn hard work into lasting success. We do this by replacing financial guesswork with real visibility, transforming cash flow from a constant source of stress into a clear signal owners can use to run stronger, more resilient businesses. We're looking for a Manager, Influencer Marketing for Relay's influencer marketing program. This is a player/coach role: you'll lead the team while continuing to personally own our most strategic creator relationships and the highest-stakes campaigns. You will own the influencer marketing function end-to-end—strategy, team, budget, performance, and roadmap—setting the bar for what great looks like, hiring and developing the team that delivers against it, and building the systems that let the program scale without losing craft. The program you'll inherit is real and productive—your team is running campaigns today, generating conversions, and growing creator relationships across the SMB landscape. The right candidate is a senior leader who has built a successful influencer program at a fast growing company, who has a pulse on rising influencers and must-get talent, and who can think far outside the boundaries of who a "typical" fintech partner might be. You'll partner closely with Brand, Demand Gen, Lifecycle, and Product Marketing to ensure creator work is integrated across the customer journey, champion Relay's voice and mission with creators and audiences alike, and serve as Relay's internal authority on the creator economy—translating platform shifts and emerging formats into business decisions. What You'll Be Doing - Own and evolve Relay's influencer marketing strategy across paid, organic, UGC, and ambassador models, working with the Director of Brand and Creative to define the long-term vision for how creator partnerships drive brand awareness, audience growth, and funded account conversions - Directly manage and develop a team of Influencer Marketing Managers, owning hiring, leveling, performance management, and growth pathways while coaching the team on creator strategy, deal structure, and platform mechanics - Personally own Relay's highest-stakes creator relationships and ambassador deals, negotiating usage rights, content cadence, and exclusivity terms with confidence on Relay's behalf - Pioneer non-traditional creator partnerships for fintech, identifying creators whose audiences have latent SMB-owner concentration—even when their content isn't about business—and designing partnerships that earn attention before they earn a click - Lead the creative and storytelling work on Relay's biggest creator partnerships, sitting in concepting calls to push ideas forward, writing briefs that give creators a real anchor without scripting them into corners, and holding the editorial bar across the program - Build the measurement infrastructure that lets the function defend top-of-funnel investment—brand lift, share of voice, audience composition, post-exposure intent—while maintaining attribution discipline on the conversion side, and own influencer budget modeling, pacing, and reporting - Stay ahead of platform shifts, FTC and compliance changes, and emerging creator formats, continuously identifying new partnership models and channels where Relay should show up Who You Are - You have 8+ years of experience in influencer or creator marketing roles (including at least 2 years as a people manager), ideally in a high-growth SaaS or fintech environment - You have a proven track record of pioneering non-obvious creator partnerships—you can walk us through deals you've built outside your category's predictable lane and tell us exactly why they worked - You've built a creator program from a smaller team into a scaled function - You bring strong storytelling and creative concepting instincts; you've personall