About Playground

Playground is working to make excellent child care accessible to all. Playground has built best-in-class software to manage all aspects of running a child care business. We believe that providers should focus on providing incredible child care — the kind of work that only people can do — and that software should manage the rest. We’re building the child care management platform that eliminates the administrative work of running a center.

Playground is at an inflection point — and poised to grow extremely fast. We have raised millions of dollars, secured several statewide contracts, and are working with thousands of schools across the country. Additionally, our founders were recently honored as Forbes 30 Under 30.

We are a team of owners who are not afraid to dive into large, complex projects. If you are excited by the prospect of building from the ground up and joining a collaborative, high-growth startup — we’d love to meet you.

About the Marketing Team

You’d be joining as one of Playground’s first five marketing hires, which means no established playbook, no inherited clunk, and no ceiling on what you can build. What exists today is a product customers genuinely love, strong company momentum, and a real opportunity to define what marketing looks like at one of the fastest-growing companies in early childhood education.

Marketing at Playground is a growth and revenue function. We don’t run campaigns for awareness alone or invest in brand for the sake of narrative. Everything we do has a measurable outcome, and every marketer carries a revenue goal. For the right person, that clarity is energizing — you always know what winning looks like.

We’re looking for marketers with deep expertise in one or two disciplines who can also think strategically, structure their own work, and build something net new from scratch. We value analytical thinkers who are curious enough to experiment and creative enough to make those experiments land. At the end of the day, we care about results, not org charts.

About the Role

As the Customer Marketing & Community Lead at Playground, you will make customers our most credible marketing channel and build a community of practice around our product. You will design and run advocacy and referral programs from scratch, produce user spotlights and case studies that turn real usage into proof, and build high-touch executive programs that deepen relationships with our most strategic accounts.

On the community side, you will operate organic social as a two-way relationship channel — engaging directly with users, hosting conversations, and creating the spaces where our customers gather. You will serve as the voice of the customer internally, shaping messaging and product positioning while directly contributing to demand generation through referrals, advocacy, and customer-led growth.

This role is based in New York City and is full-time.

What You’ll Do

Own this function’s contribution to demand generation pipeline, including referrals, advocate-driven inbound, reference calls, and case studies
Build and manage the metrics framework connecting advocacy, referrals, and community to acquisition, engagement, and expansion
Design and run high-touch executive programs including Customer Advisory Board, Executive Briefings, early access programs, and customer reference networks
Operate organic social as a true community channel through active engagement in comments, DMs, and relevant groups
Build and moderate community spaces (Slack, LinkedIn groups, or similar) and run consistent programming such as AMAs, office hours, and roundtables
Design and launch a formal customer referral program with clear incentives, attribution, and measurable pipeline impact
Develop showcase, award, or competition programs to highlight customer use cases and success stories
Feed voice-of-customer insights into company messaging and product positioning in partnership with leadership
Build and scale a structured customer advocacy program, including named advocates, recognition systems, and content participation
Source and interview customers and collaborate with creative teams to produce case studies, spotlights, and community-driven content

What You Need

6+ years of experience in customer marketing, advocacy, community marketing, or executive customer programs, ideally within B2B SaaS
Proven experience building or scaling customer-facing programs from scratch
Highly self-directed and comfortable operating in a fast-moving, unstructured environment
Strong analytical mindset with the ability to tie community and advocacy efforts to measurable business outcomes
Experience designing and running advocacy or referral programs with clear pipeline or retention impact
Hands-on community management experience, not just overseeing external partners
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage customers, executives, and internal stakeholders
Strong writing and content production skills, with a hands-on approach to storytelling and execution

Nice to Have

Experience building a practitioner community (online or in-person) from the ground up
Experience running “built with X”-style customer content programs
Experience managing a Customer Advisory Board or Executive Briefing Center
Background in video, podcast, or live content production