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Aiven is a global team of 400+ people building a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure accessible to developers and builders. The company is establishing a physical presence in the San Francisco Bay Area to capture companies forming their AI infrastructure stacks.
As the Bay Area Marketing Lead, you will be the on-the-ground owner and single accountable driver of community, brand, and event strategy in the territory, working alongside the Strategic Account Executive.
Key responsibilities include:
• Own and run Aiven's Bay Area community meetup program (monthly, scaling to twice monthly): decide format and cadence, source practitioner and external speakers, and recruit non-competing co-host partners. Speakers should be majority external practitioners, not just Aiven staff.
• Tag-team with the local sales team to build and maintain the Bay Area speaker, partner, and ecosystem network. You are jointly responsible for who Aiven knows in the territory.
• Set the strategy for how Aiven builds brand presence in the Bay Area. Decide who we need to know (influencers, partners, press/analysts, relevant local companies), where we need to show up, and what will get attention in a saturated market. This includes owning billboard/out-of-home and guerrilla marketing (murals, street activations, etc.).
• Build relationships with the Bay Area's VC, accelerator, and founder community and feed those relationships into the meetup and partner network.
• Support flagship conference presence. Manage sponsorship logistics and identify speaking-slot opportunities for Aiven's team, partnering with PR/comms to land them.
• Work with Aiven's PR and comms teams to amplify the company's voice in the region.
• Track and report on program health: RSVP-to-attendance rate, pipeline sourced or influenced with target accounts, and local press mentions/coverage.
You'll own both strategy and execution across several concurrent workstreams, deciding how Aiven builds relationships, shows up, and stands out in a crowded Bay Area market.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Based in and have experience working in a similar marketing role in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is an in-person role by design.
• Enough technical fluency in AI, cloud, or data infrastructure to hold a credible conversation, vet talks, and earn respect from engineers. Must have technical chops to find and win over the right people in a new market.
• Senior-level autonomy: you will be the sole on-the-ground owner of multiple concurrent workstreams and expected to set direction as much as execute against it.
• Dogged and resourceful: an out-of-the-box thinker who is genuinely proactive, doesn't wait to be told what to do, and doesn't let blockers stop them. When the obvious path is closed, you find another way forward.
NICE TO HAVE:
• Existing relationships in the Bay Area AI-native/startup, VC, or open-source data community.
