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Exa is a $2.2B-valued AI search engine company (Series C, led by a16z) building the search infrastructure for the AI era. The company powers AI agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs with ~100 employees based primarily in SF.
As the first Field Event Manager in San Francisco, you will own and execute Exa's regional event strategy and execution. Events are central to Exa's marketing strategy, and the Bay Area is ground zero for reaching developers building with AI and enterprise leaders adopting AI. You will build the regional program from the ground up, concepting how prospects, partners, and customers discover and experience Exa.
Key responsibilities:
**Regional Program Strategy**: Own the complete event strategy for your region, identifying effective formats, strategic cities, target audiences, and budgets while keeping quarterly pipeline goals in focus. Co-build plans with sales input and defend them with pipeline rationale. Success is measured by program quality and pipeline sourced/influenced.
**End-to-End Execution**: Own every event from concept through post-event follow-up—sourcing venues, orchestrating vendors and production, managing invitations, shaping content and messaging, overseeing on-site execution, and sweating every detail. Success is measured by attendance, MQL and pipeline goals, and flawless execution.
**Sales Partnership & Account Targeting**: Establish tight sales partnerships, align on personas and accounts for each event, and create effective event playbooks that convert to pipeline. Success is measured by meetings generated and target accounts engaged.
**Outcomes & Follow-Through**: Own what happens during and after events, including timely lead handoff and follow-up sequences with SDRs, Lifecycle Marketing, and Marketing Ops. Enterprise dinners are measured by target account engagement, meetings booked, and qualified opportunities. Developer events are measured by new sign-ups and repeat engagement.
**Budget & Vendor Management**: Own event budgets, vendor selection and negotiation, and cost per qualified lead. Success is measured by program impact per dollar.
**AI-First Operations**: Use AI to compress operational timelines—invite-list development, personalized outreach at scale, vendor research, run-of-show generation, and post-event recaps.
You will own a strategy balancing brand awareness and pipeline-driving events: executive dinners, networking receptions, hackathons, third-party sponsorships, partner events, and more. You'll partner with Account Executives and SDRs to build an event plan delivering coverage across the West Coast territory and key accounts.
This is a founding team member opportunity to build a regional program from the ground up at a pivotal time for Exa. The role requires someone who sweats details, creates world-class experiences, has strong instincts for what the AI builder community cares about, and obsesses over measuring event impact.
**Requirements:**
- Minimum 4 years of experience in field marketing or event marketing at a B2B technology company, including ownership of a regional program (not just execution of someone else's)
- Fluency with both developer and enterprise audiences; experience running events for technical/developer audiences and enterprise buyers
- Demonstrated ability to drive pipeline; you have owned a pipeline number and can speak to forecasting and reporting on event performance
- Evidence of strong sales partnerships; ability to manage sales reps and push back on investments that aren't right
- Knowledge of world-class venues, vendors, and event tactics that draw hard-to-reach developers and senior technical buyers in the Bay Area and beyond
- Meticulous event budget and timeline management with vendor negotiation experience
- Growth mindset; embrace feedback and see learnings as optimization opportunities
- Experience using AI daily to remove operational load
- Demonstrated ability to shape relevant experiences that engage developer and AI-native audiences with deep interest in staying ahead of AI trends
- Experience with AI-native audiences is a strong plus
**Nice to Have:**
- Experience at an early-stage company where things moved fast and you had to build quickly to scale
- Pioneered an innovative event format or strategy developed and successfully executed from scratch
- Experience developing booth designs and strategies that drive lead generation
- Familiarity with event tech (registration, badge scanning, on-site capture) and CRM integration
- Experience building and refining reporting to track event performance
- Demonstrated experience informing event content (topics, speakers, experiences relevant to AI builders)
