Head of Growth Marketing, Self-Service

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI. What is The Role We're looking for a Head of Growth Marketing to own customer acquisition for Elastic’s self-service business. You'll be accountable for driving more high-intent trial starts - trials that activate and convert to paying customers - and you'll use data to continuously improve conversion and efficiency across the funnel. This is a player-coach role that spans strategy, team building, and hands-on channel execution. You'll build and scale a distributed team of growth marketers, partner with external agencies, and work closely with Product, Marketing, Web, and Documentation teams to deliver acquisition programs that move the needle. This role reports to the General Manager, Self-Service. What You Will Be Doing • Team Leadership • Set the annual and quarterly growth plan and report performance against trial-start and conversion targets • Build, scale, and lead a distributed team of growth marketers • Coach and develop the team, and set a high bar for craft, rigor, and experimentation velocity Paid Acquisition • Own paid search, paid social, display/retargeting, and emerging paid channels, managing spend against CAC and payback targets • Manage external agencies against clear performance targets and hold them accountable for results • Continuously test creative, audiences, landing pages, and bidding strategies to improve conversion and efficiency Lifecycle Marketing • Own email, nurture, and in-product messaging programs that improve activation and trial-to-paid conversion • Build segmented, behavior-triggered journeys tied to product signals and lifecycle stage • Partner with Product so lifecycle programs and in-product experiences work as one funnel Cross-Functional Collaboration • Partner with Self-Service Product Managers on activation, onboarding, and conversion experiences • Work with the Marketing organization on brand, content, and campaign alignment • Collaborate with Web and Documentation teams on the pages and content that support the acquisition journey What You'll Drive • High-intent trial starts : grow the volume of trials that activate and convert, across paid, organic, and lifecycle channels • Acquisition efficiency : improve CAC, payback, and conversion across the channel portfolio • Trial-to-paid conversion : improve the rate at which trial users become paying customers • Team performance : build a high-performing distributed team and agency roster with repeatable playbooks What You Bring • 10+ years of growth marketing experience at B2B enterprise SaaS companies, with 3+ years building and leading teams • Direct experience in a product-led growth (PLG) motion alongside an enterprise sales motion (e.g., Datadog, MongoDB, Atlassian, Confluent) • Proven track record of hitting acquisition targets and managing meaningful paid budgets against CAC and payback goals • Experience building teams from the ground up and managing external agencies to performance • Strong analytical skills: fluent in funnel metrics, comfortable working with dashboards and data teams; SQL or product analytics experience (Amplitude or similar) is a plus • Strong creative instincts across messaging, landing pages, and campaign concepts • Comfort marketing to developer and technical practitioner audiences • Bias for action and comfort with ambiguity — energized by building…