Director, Audience

Overview

About the Role : We’re looking for a Director of Audience to build, lead, and grow the engine that powers our publications — helping us attract new subscribers, deepen reader engagement, and expand our cross-channel reach.

You will lead our content teams across multiple BWZ brands and channels including editorial, video, podcasts, and content marketing. You’ll report directly to senior leadership and play a central role in how we grow our audience, strengthen our brand voice, and convert readership into subscribers and revenue.

This is an audience growth role, not a purely editorial one. Your job is to make sure our content, newsletters, and distribution channels work together as a predictable audience growth and engagement machine. You’ll shape what gets published, how it gets packaged, where it gets distributed, and how it performs.

The Director of Audience will shape the systems that run our publications, define our editorial voice, build our growth engine, and help our brands become indispensable destinations in their niches.

If you love building and running a modern content engine and have hands-on experience growing audiences across email, social, podcasts, video and on-site content — then you’ll thrive here.

Who You Are : You’re a strategic, hands-on leader who knows how to grow digital audiences. You’ve run content engines before — including newsletters, blogs, and social and you understand how packaging, distribution, storytelling, and system design come together to drive subscriber growth and engagement.

You can zoom out to define strategy and zoom in to give direct feedback on a headline, hook, or weekly content plan. You’re energized by building playbooks, improving quality, coaching creators, and helping brands feel “alive.”

You also bring calm, clarity, and sound judgement to content teams. You move fast but care deeply about quality, narrative, voice, and insight.

Most importantly : You know how to turn content into audience growth.

What You’ll Be Doing

Drive subscriber growth and audience acquisition across the portfolio

Lead all content, packaging, and distribution efforts that grow the ICP subscriber base

Ensure Content Marketing prioritizes formats that reliably convert : roundups, lead magnets, community insight content, and audience-product content

Build subscriber-growth playbooks, systems, and frameworks that make acquisition predictable

Strengthen newsletter CTAs, landing pages, onboarding, and incentives

Identify high-conversion content formats across brands and scale them

Build systems & templates that make high-quality subscriber-acquisition content repeatable

Increase return visitor engagement by elevating content quality, clarity & experience

Own narrative, clarity, structure, visuals, packaging, and hooks across all content

Act as the “quality guardian” — refining angles, narrative flow, and clarity so content feels truly worth returning to

Maintain and evolve the serious-fun, human, insight-rich BWZ editorial voice

Raise and enforce quality standards (“sniff test”) across site, newsletter, and social

Prototype and showcase “what great looks like” to guide the team

Improve content journeys and UX by collaborating with Design / UX

Help the team build engaging franchises that drive weekly / daily return visits

Grow non-organic traffic through world-class multi-channel distribution

Own distribution across newsletter, social, Discover, Slack, communities, podcasts, partnerships, and Digital PR

Guide newsletter packaging : hooks, intros, subject lines, CTAs, block order

Partner with Editors on Discover-friendly story angles and timing

Build reusable workflows for repurposing content into clips, threads, email insights, and social snippets

Identify breakout formats and scale them across brands

Ensure all content is packaged for maximum reach across all ICP-relevant channels

Lead, coach, and scale a high-performing multi-disciplinary team

Set priorities, weekly cadences, and production rhythms across Content Marketing and Editors

Give direct, constructive feedback on writing, clarity, story craft, and packaging

Build team capability in interviewing, SME extraction, narrative craft, visual packaging, and distribution

Develop and evolve the systems, playbooks, templates, and governance models that drive consistency and quality

Identify capacity gaps and hire accordingly

Foster a culture of creative experimentation, skill growth, and continuous improvement

Build authority through insight-led content, SME networks, and proprietary assets

Grow and maintain a SME network that regularly feeds insights into content pipelines

Ensure teams extract operator insights → turn insights into patterns → turn patterns into stories → turn stories into subscriber growth

Lead creation of lead magnets, benchmarking reports, and proprietary insight content

Partner with Digital PR on earned media, backlinks, authority building, and distribution amplification

How Your Success Will Be Measured

Subscriber Growth (non-organic, monthly)

Return Visitor Engagement (RFV) — how often readers come back

Non-Organic Traffic Growth (direct, referral, social, email, Discover)

Your Skillset Includes

Extensive experience leading audience growth teams in digital media or B2B SaaS

Proven experience growing audiences through newsletter strategy, content publishing, and multi-channel distribution

Experience directly managing and coaching large teams of internal writers, editors & content marketers

Experience operating at daily or weekly publishing cadence

Strong editorial instincts : hooks, angles, headlines, narrative flow, packaging

Experience creating playbooks, templates, and content systems that scale

Comfort with analytics and evaluating performance to guide decisions

Nice to Haves

Experience at a modern media company or equivalent B2B SaaS brand

Experience with AI-powered content or editorial workflows

Experience building contributor / SME programs

Experience with podcast or video editorial

Experience of both event and membership-based business models and how content drives membership acquisition and retention

Experience in public speaking, representing brands at events, panels, and conferences

Salary Statement : This full-time position is available as either a remote or hybrid position (depending on location), with an annual salary in the range of $150,000 to $200,000 CAD. The range is a guide for the expected skills, knowledge and experience for new hires based in Canada only. Seniority level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, and alignment with market data. This means ranges will vary for candidates based outside of Canada and / or at different seniority levels. In addition to annual salary, full-time employees are eligible for a discretionary bonus and a comprehensive benefits package.

About Us

We’re a rapidly growing, independent media tech company headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Since 2012, our portfolio of influential digital publications has been helping millions of people succeed at work.

Our brands cover thought leadership for executives in project management, people management, product management, tech, marketing and many others - with the goal of connecting people with knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed professionally in the age of AI.

We got our start in 2011 as The Digital Project Manager blog, founded by our CEO Ben Aston. Since then, we’ve grown into an international team of 70+ creators, strategists, and innovators with a portfolio of more than 15 online publications. We enjoy an impact-driven environment that combines the agility of a startup with the creativity of an agency and the diversity of a global company.

We’ve previously ranked #30 in The Globe and Mail’s Fastest Growing Company list as well as Deloitte's Fast 50 program, received a CMI award for Best Digital Publication for The Digital Project Manager—and we’re listed in both Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers, and Best Employers in BC!

All of this growth is driven by our commitment to our mission : In a world of evolving skills, practices, and technology, we’re creating a playbook for the future of work and empowering communities to create it with us.

Want to learn more? Watch this video to learn why the team love working at BWZ!

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Black and White Zebra is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, marital status, military or veteran’s status (including protected veterans, as may be required by federal law), sexual orientation or any other category protected by law. We celebrate all backgrounds and attributes that continue to help make our team impactful, iterative, adaptable, and fun!

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