Influencer Marketing Manager (Contract – 8 Months)

Location: Remote (U.S. East Coast Time Zones preferred)
Contract Length: 8 months (with potential to extend)
Time Commitment: ~20–30 hours/week (flexible based on experience)

About Extern

Extern is bridging the gap between education and industry through remote externships. We help college students across the U.S. build real-world experience by working on real company projects — regardless of major, GPA, or background.

Creators are one of our most powerful acquisition channels and we want to hyper charge this channel.

We’re hiring a performance-driven Influencer Marketer to take ownership of our creator engine for 8 months with an opportunity to extend.

This role is not coordination. It’s ownership. You will directly influence student acquisition and help turn influencer marketing into a scalable, predictable growth channel.

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Role Overview

This role will own the full lifecycle of Extern’s influencer and creator partnerships — from discovery and evaluation to contract negotiation, relationship management, and performance tracking. Extern’s Marketing function is highly adapted to in-house agentic workflows that we built from scratch, so this role will be given onboarding on managing AI agents for influencer content and management. 

You will work cross-functionally with growth, marketing, and performance stakeholders to define strategy and ensure influencer efforts are aligned with broader acquisition goals.

You will also collaborate on Extern’s own TikTok strategy, given its importance as a primary audience channel.

This is not a purely creative role — it is strategic, operational, and analytical.

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What You’ll Own

You will own the full lifecycle of creator partnerships across TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn from sourcing to performance optimization.

Acquisition & Performance

• Own influencer-driven acquisition KPIs
• Allocate and optimize influencer budget
• Identify high-performing creator segments and double down
• Run structured experiments across tiers, formats, and compensation models
• Treat creators as a performance channel, not a brand play

Creator Sourcing & Evaluation

• Optimize existing repeatable sourcing systems and consider/build new processes
• Evaluate creators using data, not vibes
• Assess audience quality, intent, and conversion potential
• Leverage internal AI agents to streamline sourcing, outreach, and analysis

Negotiation & Relationship Management

• Lead contract negotiations and renewals
• Manage deliverables and timelines
• Maintain strong relationships with top performers
• Hold creators accountable to performance expectations

Reporting & Optimization

• Partner with Growth on attribution and tracking
• Analyze performance weekly and iterate quickly
• Present insights and recommendations to leadership
• Document playbooks and systems for long-term scale

TikTok Strategy Collaboration

• Contribute to Extern’s owned TikTok growth strategy
• Identify high-converting content patterns
• Stay ahead of Gen Z trends and platform shifts

Compliance & Brand Safety

• Ensure compliance with platform policies and proper disclosure requirements.
• Monitor brand alignment and manage creator content risks.
• Maintain clear documentation and risk controls across partnerships.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Coordinate closely with Growth and Performance teams (without owning paid channels).
• Ensure branding and content consistency.

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Must-haves

• 3+ years in influencer marketing, creator partnerships, or performance marketing
• Experience managing paid creator campaigns (not just organic seeding)
• Strong analytical ability (comfortable in performance dashboards)
• Experience negotiating creator contracts
• Ability to operate independently in a fast-moving startup
• Extremely organized and detail-oriented
• Excellent communicator (written and verbal)
• Able to balance relationship-building with performance accountability

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Not a fit if

• You’ve only worked on brand awareness campaigns
• You’ve never been accountable to acquisition metrics
• You prefer purely creative or community roles
• You need heavy structure and oversight
• You’re not currently trying different AI tools

Bonus if you have

• Comfort working inside AI-supported workflows and automated systems
• Experience marketing to college students
• Experience at a consumer startup or ex-agency
• Built influencer programs from scratch
• Familiarity with affiliate tracking and attribution systems
• Experience managing micro- and mid-tier creators at scale
• Experience scaling TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, or IG as a primary acquisition channel

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What Success Looks Like

By the end of 8 months, you will have:

• Built a repeatable creator acquisition and management system.
• Identified top-performing creator personas and doubled down on them.
• Improved creator-driven acquisition efficiency (lower CAC).
• Strengthened long-term creator relationships.
• Increased meaningful unique traffic.

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Why This Role Matters

Creators are one of Extern’s highest-leverage growth channels. This role sits at the intersection of brand, performance, and community — and directly impacts how thousands of college students discover Extern.

You won’t just manage influencers. You’ll build an acquisition engine.