Founding Growth & Product Marketing Manager

Founding Growth & Product Marketing Manager

Location: Austin, TX
Work Type: Full-time or contract-to-full-time
Company: Surf
Industry: Payroll, HR Tech, B2B SaaS
Stage: Early-stage, founder-led, fast-moving

About Surf

Surf is building modern payroll software for small businesses, CPAs, and payroll bureaus.

Payroll is mission-critical, operationally complex, and still painfully outdated for many small businesses and service providers. We are building Surf to make payroll easier, faster, more automated, and more reliable.

We are currently live in Texas and Florida and are expanding state by state. We are looking for someone in Austin who can help us turn founder-led selling into a repeatable marketing and growth engine.

About the Role

We are looking for a Founding Growth & Product Marketing Manager to join Surf in Austin.

This is not a traditional marketing manager role. We do not need someone who only manages social media calendars or brand awareness campaigns.

We need someone who can understand the product deeply, talk to customers, sharpen our positioning, create sales and marketing assets, run experiments, and help generate demand from payroll bureaus, CPAs, and small businesses.

You will work directly with the founder and help shape how Surf is positioned, sold, and communicated in the market.

What You’ll Do

• Own Surf’s positioning and messaging for payroll bureaus, CPAs, and small businesses
• Create landing page copy, sales decks, one-pagers, email sequences, and demo follow-up assets
• Help build and execute founder-led growth campaigns
• Create content for LinkedIn, email, website, and outbound campaigns
• Interview customers, prospects, payroll bureaus, and CPAs to understand their pain points
• Turn customer conversations into case studies, campaigns, and product messaging
• Support outbound sales with scripts, battlecards, competitor comparisons, and objection handling
• Help plan local Austin and Texas go-to-market experiments
• Identify events, communities, partnerships, and channels where Surf should show up
• Work closely with product to translate features into clear customer-facing value
• Measure what is working and double down on channels that create qualified conversations

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of experience in B2B SaaS marketing, product marketing, growth, demand generation, or founder-led marketing
• Strong writing skills
• Ability to simplify complex products into clear messaging
• Comfortable working in an early-stage startup environment
• Strong interest in customer conversations and market research
• Ability to create practical marketing assets without needing a large team
• Experience supporting sales teams or founder-led sales
• Comfortable with fast iteration, ambiguity, and hands-on execution
• Based in Austin or willing to spend meaningful time with the team in Austin

Nice to Have

• Experience in payroll, HR tech, fintech, accounting software, or SMB SaaS
• Experience marketing to CPAs, payroll bureaus, accountants, bookkeepers, or small business owners
• Experience at an early-stage startup
• Experience with LinkedIn-led growth, outbound campaigns, events, or partner marketing
• Basic understanding of SEO, content strategy, and website conversion

You Might Be a Great Fit If

• You like building from zero to one
• You are both strategic and hands-on
• You can write clearly and think from the customer’s point of view
• You are comfortable talking to prospects directly
• You do not wait for perfect instructions
• You enjoy working closely with founders
• You care more about pipeline and customer conversations than vanity metrics

Compensation

Compensation will depend on experience and structure.

We are open to:

• Full-time role
• Contract-to-full-time
• Base salary plus performance bonus
• Equity for the right founding-level candidate

Expected range:

$80,000 to $110,000 base salary, depending on experience
Equity may be included for the right candidate.

Why Join Surf

This is an opportunity to join Surf at the early stage and help shape the company’s go-to-market engine from the ground up.

You will not be joining to maintain an existing marketing machine. You will help build it.

You will work directly with the founder, talk to real customers, shape the messaging, influence product direction, and help bring a modern payroll product to a market that badly needs better software.

How to Apply

Send us your resume or LinkedIn profile.

Bonus points if you include a short note answering:

“How would you market Surf to payroll bureaus, CPAs, and small businesses in Texas?”