Influencer Marketing Manager

Kestra is the open-source orchestration platform, 30,000 GitHub stars, $36M raised, used by Bloomberg, JPMorgan, Toyota, Deutsche Telekom. We orchestrate infrastructure, data, AI, and business workflows from a single platform. We grew to enterprise scale through community and word of mouth. Now we need to accelerate. Developer influencer marketing is the highest-leverage paid channel in the open-source infrastructure space, and we're building the function from scratch.

Overview

This is a hands-on, ownership role. You build the program, run it, and are accountable for its results.

Responsibilities

• Source and qualify creators — Map YouTube creators, newsletter authors, podcasters, community figures whose audiences are platform engineers, DevOps leads, infra builders, data teams, technical founders.
• Build a scoring system: audience relevance, engagement quality, growth trajectory, content fit. Maintain a ranked prospect pipeline.
• Tools: Social Blade, Passionfroot, GitHub/Discord/Twitter signals, internal recs.
• Monitor who other infra/dev tools companies sponsor. What's working, what gaps exist.
• Negotiate, structure, and close deals — Own end-to-end: first contact, rate negotiation, contract, invoicing (net-30), follow-up.
• Build and maintain a CPM pricing model benchmarking fair value by channel size, engagement, and placement type. Update quarterly with real deal data.
• Formats: pre-roll, mid-roll, end-roll, integrations, dedicated tutorials, multi-video packages.
• Request examples of previous ad reads before committing. Quality of the read matters as much as the audience.
• Brief creators and manage delivery — Develop a modular messaging kit: what Kestra is, what it solves, who it's for, how to start. Not a script, a toolkit creators actually want to use.
• Maintain a library of video assets, product demos, in-app recordings for B-roll.
• Set up unique UTM links per creator/campaign. Enforce: link in top 3 lines, verbal CTA mentioning Kestra on sign-up.
• Align placement timing with Product Marketing: launches, feature pushes, competitive moments.
• Review every placement within 48h of going live. Flag issues, track delivery against brief.
• Manage the relationship lifecycle — Active recording of all creator relationships, deal history, performance, comms log, renewal dates.
• Move top performers into recurring deals: quarterly packages, ambassador programs, co-created series.
• Handle underperformers directly: renegotiate, adjust format, or end the partnership. Clear and professional.
• Expand adjacent channels — Test technical newsletters, dev podcasts, sponsored community content beyond YouTube.
• Explore co-marketing: joint webinars, live coding sessions, "build with Kestra" series.
• Feed creator conversation insights back into Product and Marketing, what resonates, what confuses, what competitors are doing.
• Build the playbook — Document everything: sourcing criteria, outreach templates, negotiation frameworks, briefing kits, dashboards, reporting cadences.
• Build a self-serve onboarding flow so new partnerships spin up fast.

How We Measure Results

You own a dashboard. These are the numbers on it:

• CPM (Cost per 1,000 views): Negotiate rates, pick efficient channels, cut underperformers.
• Sessions (Unique visits from UTM links): CTA quality, audience relevance.
• Sign-ups (Accounts via UTM or self-reported mention): Messaging quality, audience fit, creator authenticity.
• Conversion (Sessions → sign-ups %): Brief quality, landing page, targeting.
• Budget ROI (Spend vs. pipeline influenced): Portfolio mix, negotiation, doubling down on winners.
• Repeat rate (% of creators who renew): Relationship quality, fair dealing, good briefs.

Who You Are

Not a generic marketing hire. We're looking for a specific type of person.

Background — one or more of these:

• Agency vet: you ran influencer campaigns for tech or SaaS clients at a talent, media, or creator-focused agency. You know how to manage 20 partnerships at once and keep quality high.
• Creator platform alumni: You understand the mechanics from the platform side and want to operate from the brand side.
• Tech influencer world native: you were a creator yourself, managed creators, or worked in DevRel running sponsorship programs.
• Dev tools operator: you did influencer or developer marketing at an open-source or dev tools company and saw what works firsthand.

• Skills and instincts:
• You know the dev/tech influencer landscape cold.
• You think in funnels, not impressions. Views are nice, sign-ups are the point.
• You're organized. CRM, budget tracker, content calendar, reporting template.
• You write briefs that creators actually want to read. Clear, short, no jargon.
• Comfortable async in a distributed international team. You don't need to be managed day-to-day.

• Bonus:
• You've used orchestration, CI/CD, or infra tools. Don't need to be a data engineer, but can hold a conversation with one.
• Existing network of tech creators or creator managers.
• Experience with PostHog, Dub, Hubspot, Common Room, Google Analytics and attribution tools.