# Commercial Lead, Referrals

**Company:** [Upside](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/upside)
**Location:** Washington, DC, New York, NY
**Role:** Business Development
**Salary:** $170k – $212k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Looker, A/B Testing, Conversion Funnel Analysis, CRM, Email Marketing, Push Notifications, In-App Messaging, Product Roadmap Collaboration, Referral Program Management, Growth Marketing
**Posted:** 2026-06-10

> Own end-to-end performance of Upside's high-performing referrals channel, including strategy, incentive design, lifecycle activation, and conversion optimization in partnership with product.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Do
- Grow referrals as a share of total acquired new users — set the annual target, track weekly, and intervene when off-pace.
- Drive referred-user conversion: referral signup → first transaction → M1–M3 retention. Own the full funnel, not just top-of-funnel volume.
- Build and operate a cohesive, behavior-triggered referral engine — replacing one-off campaigns with an always-on lifecycle system that activates users at high-intent moments (first cash out, 3rd reconcile, heavy-active milestone, etc.).
- Define and execute incentive strategy: test and optimize referral bonus constructs by segment, balancing conversion rates against cost-per-acquired-user.
- Partner with the Referrals PM to shape the product roadmap — you set commercial requirements; they build the mechanics. Align on experiment prioritization, feature launches, and measurement.
- Unlock the never-referrer segment (the majority of the active base): develop and iterate on strategies to get users from 0 → 1 referral, with a clear path to repeat advocacy.
- Define success metrics, own the dashboard, and report progress to consumer growth leadership and company executives.

## Competencies You’ll Need
- 7+ years in growth, commercial, or consumer product marketing roles, with a track record of owning acquisition, engagement, or retention KPIs end-to-end.
- Deep experience partnering with product and CRM teams to design and optimize behavior-triggered growth programs across email, push, and in-app messaging in a consumer product environment, ideally in membership, loyalty, or other repeat-engagement businesses.
- Strong analytical ability: comfortable in Looker or similar BI tools, fluent in conversion funnel analysis, and experienced designing and interpreting A/B experiments.
- Experience collaborating tightly with product managers — you know how to write commercial requirements, participate in sprint reviews, and influence roadmap decisions without owning eng resources directly.
- Demonstrated ability to work across functions (product, engineering, creative, finance, legal) to ship programs on time.
- Clear, direct communicator — you can write a crisp exec summary and present tradeoffs to senior leadership without a handler.
- Direct ownership of a referral or word-of-mouth growth program in a consumer app, with a strong understanding of referral mechanics, fraud considerations, and the incentive design tradeoffs that drive sustainable performance preferred.
- Familiarity with PLG principles or viral loop design is a plus, especially if applied in consumer products to increase user-driven acquisition.
- Experience in consumer fintech, cashback, loyalty, or similarly economics-driven consumer businesses is strongly preferred.

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