Senior Paid Social Specialist

About Cardiff

Cardiff lends to small businesses. Since 2004 we've funded more than $12 billion across the country, to businesses in logistics, healthcare, construction, professional services, and plenty in between. We're building our own underwriting technology, and we still answer the phone; our customers need capital fast, and they want a straight answer from a person who can actually help.

Location: Remote (U.S.)

Employment Type: Full-time

Department: Marketing

Reports to: Chief Marketing Officer

The role

Search captures demand. Social creates it. Our customer is not looking for a lender at 9pm he is scrolling, and the thing that stops him is a recognizable face saying something true about running a business. We have that: a steady pipeline of celebrity and creator video shot in vertical, square and wide. This role owns both Meta and TikTok one person, one creative strategy, one budget decision about where the next dollar goes.

Scope and budget

This role owns the larger share of Cardiff's paid media, roughly two-thirds of total spend, about $1.3–2M a month today across Meta and TikTok, with aggressive targets to grow it. Meta is our proven social channel. TikTok is the one with the most room in it. As we add social and creator-driven platforms, they come under this role.

What you will own

• Own paid social end to end. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok: account structure, campaign objectives, budget allocation between the two platforms, bid strategy and placement decisions. You decide where the next incremental dollar performs best and you defend it with fund-rate data.
• Run the creative engine. You are the highest-volume consumer of our creative team's output. Brief them with specificity, maintain a testing calendar, and hold a real testing framework (hook, format, length, aspect ratio, talent) rather than shipping variations and hoping. Know what travels between platforms and what has to be built native; a TV cutdown does not work on TikTok and we should stop pretending it does.
• Manage creative fatigue as an operating discipline. Watch frequency and CTR decay, know when a winner is done before CPA tells you, and keep enough in the queue that a refresh is never an emergency. TikTok will demand a faster cadence than Meta plan for it.
• Own audience strategy on Meta. Lookalikes built off funded customers rather than leads, exclusions of existing and in-process borrowers, and geographic weighting toward our Sun Belt concentration. Broad-plus-good-creative is a legitimate answer; be able to prove it against the alternative.
• Run the creator and Spark Ads program on TikTok. Source creators, manage whitelisting and spark codes, and run paid amplification of organic posts. Extend our celebrity roster onto TikTok in a way that reads as native rather than repurposed.
• Own the measurement stack on both platforms. Meta Conversions API and TikTok Events API: event placement, quality scores, deduplication, and the connection between platform-reported conversions and what actually funds in Salesforce. Both platforms will claim more credit than they earned; your job is to know the real number. Most TikTok accounts fail on tracking configuration before creative ever gets a fair test; yours will not.
• Guard lead quality, especially on TikTok. Cheap CPL is a trap in lending. You are measured on cost per MQL and MQL-to-fund rate, not volume. That includes the lead-form-versus-site-apply call on Meta; Instant Forms convert cheaper and fund worse, so test it and make the decision on fund rate.
• Work hand in hand with the influencer program. Influencers are central to how Cardiff markets, not a side experiment. You are the person who turns that talent into performance: deciding which creators and celebrity assets get paid budget behind them, briefing what you need shot, holding each partnership accountable to a fund-rate number, and feeding results back into who we work with next. Talent-specific creative also deserves talent-specific landing pages and vanity URLs; work with the web team on a repeatable template so a new creator can go live without a custom build.
• Lead the growth-audience push. Spanish-language creative and creators, and a serious, well-funded program aimed at women entrepreneurs: our most under-penetrated segment, and one where social audience composition works in our favor.
• Protect the accounts. Financial services advertising carries real policy risk on both platforms. Manage restrictions, special ad category requirements and appeals proactively; a disabled ad account is a company-level event at our spend.
• Report honestly, including on what is not working. Bring a clear scale-or-hold recommendation on TikTok backed by fund-rate data. We would rather hear "this is not working at this spend level and here is why" in month three than watch a budget quietly leak for a year.

What we are looking for: Social-specific

• 5 years+ managing paid social directly at scale in a direct-response or lead-gen context.
• Experience personally managing at least $500,000 in monthly paid social spend, with experience approaching or exceeding $1 million per month strongly preferred.
• Hands-on management of both Meta Ads and TikTok Ads is required, not one plus familiarity with the other. Both, with real spend and real optimization decisions behind you.
• Proven Conversions API and TikTok Events API implementation and troubleshooting experience; you can debug a broken event yourself.
• Experience with Spark Ads, creator whitelisting and creator sourcing or management.
• A creative point of view. You should be able to look at a rough cut and say what will and will not hold a thumb, and be right often enough that the creative team listens.
• Genuine native fluency in both platforms. You should be able to explain why a specific ad works, not describe TikTok as "short-form video."
• Familiarity with Meta and TikTok financial services and special ad category policies.

Nice to have: influencer experience especially

• Direct influencer and creator marketing experience is the single biggest plus for this role. Cardiff works with influencers heavily (celebrity talent and creators are the backbone of our social creative) and someone who has sourced talent, negotiated and briefed partnerships, managed deliverables and whitelisting rights, and measured a creator's performance down to a conversion metric will be a step ahead here from day one.
• Experience running an influencer program alongside paid amplification, so organic partnerships and paid social reinforce each other rather than running on separate tracks.
• Video editing ability or fast-turn creative production experience: the difference between waiting a week for a variant and testing one tomorrow.
• Experience running paid social in a regulated or lending category.
• YouTube, Snapchat or Reddit paid experience, as we look at where social expands next.

What success looks like in 90 days

• CAPI and TikTok Events API audited and fixed; platform-reported versus Salesforce-funded reconciliation running weekly.
• Meta lookalike and exclusion architecture rebuilt on funded-customer seeds.
• TikTok creator and Spark Ads pipeline established with a repeatable whitelisting process.
• First women-entrepreneur creative program live across both platforms with its own read on fund rate.
• A written, data-backed point of view on the right Meta-to-TikTok budget split, and a credible plan for where the next $500K a month goes.

Compensation and benefits

• Base salary target: $100,000- 125,000
• Up to 15% annual performance bonus.
• Full medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) plan.
• Flexible time off plus standard holidays.
• Remote-first setup with a home office allowance.

Cardiff is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team that reflects the small business owners we serve, and we encourage applicants of every background to apply.