Head of Performance Marketing

About Bark Bark is revolutionising the way people find professionals in over 1,000 unique categories. As the UK's largest and fastest-growing services marketplace, we're on a mission to make finding the right professional quick and easy. With a presence in eleven countries and plans for further expansion, joining us at this genuinely exciting time will be a journey like no other. Our cutting-edge technology and customer-first approach ensure people can access the best professionals for any job, while our 230+ strong team is dedicated to delivering an outstanding experience every step of the way. In 2024, we were proud to be recognised in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work. As a scale-up backed by leading private equity firm EMK Capital, Bark offers the energy and agility of a start-up combined with the stability and resources of an established business. Joining Bark means being part of a high-growth journey with plenty of opportunity to learn, contribute, and make a real impact.

About the Role

Bark is hiring a Head of Performance Marketing to join our Marketing leadership team. We’re running two commercial models in parallel: pay-per-lead and subscription. We need a marketplace operator with hands-on experience in both. You’ll own the entire paid acquisition stack across Google, Meta, Bing, TikTok, programmatic, paid social, paid search and emerging channels. A multi-million annual budget across 11 markets and 1,000+ services categories. You’ll lead the Performance function within our ~30-person marketing team across UK, India and Spain, partnering daily with SEO and Content, with the Trading team on the supply and demand side, and with the Brand Designer on creative. The discipline itself is moving into an agentic era: Advantage+, PMax, AI creative pipelines, LLM-driven search. If you’ve lived inside a services or two-sided marketplace operating one or both of these commercial models, this is your role.

Responsibilities

Own Paid Acquisition End-To-End: Every biddable channel rolls up to you. Paid search, paid social, programmatic, app and emerging. Multi-million annual spend across 11 markets. Strategy, allocation, account architecture, bid logic, creative testing rhythm, measurement. You’re accountable for the number, not the dashboards. Engineer Two-Sided, Marketplace-Aware Allocation: Bark is two-sided and the economics are not symmetric. Supply and demand move independently across 1,000+ services × 11 countries. You build the allocation logic that optimises for marketplace outcome (not “best ROAS wins”) and run the rebalancing rhythm with the Trading team. Run Both Commercial Models In Parallel: You keep the pay-per-lead engine healthy and you re-instrument acquisition and measurement for the subscription side. Two scoreboards, one operator. You defend both frameworks to leadership and the CFO. Run Creative At Performance Scale: Modern paid channels eat creative. You own the creative testing engine, brief our Brand Designer on paid systems, and productionise the AI creative pipeline (Nano Banana, Higgsfield, Remotion, Veo, Fal) so we ship variants in hours, not weeks. You also own the brand vs. performance budget split, defended with data. Build AI Into The Function: Agentic bidding, AI-driven creative, automated reporting, LLM-assisted account auditing. You decide where AI compounds and where it adds noise. You partner with our Marketing AI & Automation Engineer to ship the agentic workflows that replace manual processes. Lead and Grow the Team: Inherit and develop the full Performance team across paid search, paid social, programmatic, creative ops and measurement. Raise the bar on craft. Define how Performance, SEO, CRM and Brand interlock so we operate as one acquisition system, not four silos. Required Skills and Experience 8-12 years in performance / growth marketing, leading teams (4+). You’ve moved from individual contributor to leader without losing the individual contributor instinct Must have a background in the services marketplace: you’ve run multi-million paid budgets in a two-sided services marketplace. You know why marketplace allocation is structurally different from e-commerce Pay-per-lead and subscription model experience: you’ve operated a pay-per-lead marketplace at scale and you think natively in subscription economics. Direct experience of a transition from one model to the other is the tie-breaker Real scale on Google and Meta. Hands-on enough to challenge an agency or a channel lead on the actual setup, not just the headline metric AI-operational, not AI-curious. Strong point of view on Advantage+ / PMax, AI creative pipelines and agentic bidding. You know what’s signal vs. hype Strong point of view on measurement, incrementality, MMM and MTA, and the political skill to land an attribution framework across leadership and finance. Strong point of view on brand vs. performance budget allocation, defended with data Working knowledge of Tableau, our BI layer, GA4 and modern measurement. Fluency with the Google Ads and Meta APIs is a plus Strong plus: multi-market scale, 5+ countries simultaneously, ideally including the US and UK Plus: Spain-market context and comfort working with the Spanish marketplace ecosystem Excellent written and spoken English. Comfortable working async with UK, India and Spain teammates Where This Role Is Going Senior Performance leader for Bark at the most consequential commercial transition in Bark's history. You own paid acquisition end-to-end, sit on the Marketing leadership team, and have a direct line to leadership decisions on our commercial model evolution. As the subscription side scales, the role grows in scope across emerging channels, international expansion, supply-side acquisition, and influence on the broader acquisition system. Leadership track. Perks and Benefits 25 days of paid holiday, with extra days added at 3 and 5 years of service. Fully remote working, plus up to 20 days each year to work from anywhere in the world. An annual Learning & Development budget of €550 to spend on courses, training, or other resources that support your professional development. A €250 allowance towards essential home office technology to help you stay connected and productive. Interview Process Screening Call with Talent Partner 1st Stage - Hiring Manager Stage 2nd Stage - Take Home Task / Task Interview 3rd Stage - Values interview Diversity Statement At Bark, we are a platform for people, revolutionising the way professionals and individuals connect since 2014. Our culture is defined by excitement, ambition, and a commitment to raising the bar. We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) and are dedicated to embedding these principles into everything we do. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive, and our focus is on hiring, retaining and developing a globally diverse workforce that is passionate about excelling our platform and supporting our customers to succeed. Be part of our dynamic team, where bold ideas thrive, and create a future worth shouting about. Apply To This Job