Zen Educate→

Senior Retention & Growth Marketing… at Zen Educate · Vancouver

ExperiencedOn-siteFull-timeVancouver, BC70000 CAD–80000 CAD/yr

Job Description

Position: Senior Retention & Growth Marketing Specialist

Location: Vancouver – Hybrid (3 days in office)

Salary: $70,000 – $80,000 CAD/year

Type: Full-time

Hi, I'm Gerald, Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Zen Educate. I'm looking for a Senior Retention & Growth Marketing Specialist to help us build lifecycle programs that create compounding growth by making our product more valuable to educators and schools.

Lifecycle Marketing sits at the intersection of marketing, product, operations and data. Our job isn't simply to send emails or build automations—it's to understand customer behaviour, identify opportunities to improve it, and build communication journeys that create measurable business impact.

If you're someone who enjoys solving problems, loves understanding why people behave the way they do, and gets excited about building systems that improve over time, we'd love to meet you.

What are we building and why?

Getting the right teacher into the right school at the right time is one of the most important — and most broken — problems in education. Schools are spending billions on it. We're fixing that.

Since 2017, Zen has saved schools over $50 million, and we're growing fast — 3x year-over-year in the U.S. Lifecycle Marketing is one of the core engines behind that growth, and this role sits right at the centre of it.

But growth doesn't stop once someone signs up.

The best products don't grow simply by acquiring more customers. They grow by helping existing customers discover value faster, engage more deeply, and keep coming back.

That's where Lifecycle Marketing comes in.

We build the communication experiences that help educators complete their application, schools adopt new features, and customers get the right message at the right moment. We partner closely with Product, Operations and Commercial teams to identify opportunities across the customer journey and turn them into scalable lifecycle programs that improve adoption, engagement and retention.

What do you actually do?

Build lifecycle programs

Own the design, implementation and optimisation of lifecycle marketing programs across email, SMS, In-App banners and other customer touchpoints.
Create customer journeys that improve activation, engagement and retention for both educators and schools.
Build campaigns in our CRM Marketing tool, create audience segments, write compelling copy, and ensure every campaign meets a high quality bar before launch.

Own outcomes

You're responsible for more than launching campaigns. You understand how your work connects to company goals and measure success based on customer and business outcomes—not simply whether a campaign was delivered.
When projects encounter blockers, you proactively drive them forward by aligning stakeholders or finding another path.

Experiment relentlessly

Design experiments, define success metrics before launching, analyse results and continuously improve programs over time.
When something doesn't work, capture the learning and use it to build something better.

Work closely with the team

Partner with Operations, Sales, and Product to make sure campaigns connect to what the business actually needs.
Share clear, honest performance updates with senior leadership - the good and the bad.

Why this role is unique

You'll own meaningful programs from idea through execution and optimisation. You'll work closely with Product, Operations, Data and Commercial teams, giving you broad exposure across the business while helping shape the customer experience for thousands of educators and schools. Most importantly, you'll join a team that values curiosity, ownership and continuous improvement over simply checking boxes.

What makes you a great fit

You have around 3–5 years of experience in Lifecycle Marketing, CRM Marketing or Marketing Automation.
You naturally think about customer behaviour before campaigns.
You take ownership and don't wait to be told what needs improving.
You're highly curious and enjoy asking "why?" before jumping into execution.
You communicate clearly and proactively with stakeholders.
You're comfortable balancing data with good judgment.
You care deeply about quality and catch the small things before customers do.
You're collaborative, low ego and genuinely enjoy helping the people around you succeed.

Required:

Hands-on experience with marketing automation platforms (Customer.io, Braze, HubSpot, Iterable or similar)
Excel and / or Google Sheets
AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude or similar)

Nice to have:

Experience with data visualization tools such as Tableau, Looker, or similar.
Familiarity with SQL, HTML, Liquid or any other programming language.

What won't work here

If you measure success by launching campaigns rather than changing customer behaviour—you'll struggle here.
If you're uncomfortable speaking up when you see a better way of doing something—we'll both find that frustrating.
If you're looking for a highly structured environment where every project is already defined, this role will likely feel uncomfortable.
We move quickly, experiment often, and expect everyone on the team to contribute ideas—not just execution.

Our hiring process

We move fast and we respect your time. Three stages, with all interviews in each stage scheduled at the same time. We aim to get back to you within 36 hours of each stage finishing.

Stage 1: Recruiter call — compensation, availability, and the basics.

Stage 2: Intro call with Marketing — we'll talk through your experience and how you think about the work.

Stage 3:

Task & review - a short lifecycle marketing task to complete at home, then walk us through your thinking.
Cultural interview - meet the team and talk about how you work and what drives you.

Perks & benefits

Work that you want to talk about
Ownership in the company (equity)
20+ days PTO & 11 statutory holidays
Health insurance
Modern coworking space
A team that's genuinely fun to work with
Snacks and Drinks in office

Interested? Let's go.

If you've read this and feel that mix of excited and a little nervous — that's a good sign. Apply now. If you skimmed it, you can still apply, but you're missing context that'll help you in the process

Diversity and Inclusion

At Zen, we strive to build a culture of equity and inclusion, where everyone is respected, valued and appreciated for their unique traits, experiences and perspectives. We are committed to creating a safe, inclusive and equitable environment where our team can thrive, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, religion or beliefs. We value our differences and believe that practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion help us create a fairer, more compassionate environment for all.

We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds and different experiences and perspectives — just like the staff who teach through Zen and the children at the schools we work with. We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool and creating an inclusive culture where people’s voices are heard and all our team can look forward to coming to work.

We are committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of our community and promoting an equitable and inclusive environment for all. We seek out diverse opinions, beliefs, and experiences because they collectively make us stronger; we’ve had former teachers, pilots, fundraisers, engineers, lawyers, marketers, social media experts and more join our team.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.