Head of Marketing

Cape Town/Johannesburg Based | Scale-Up | Full-time Role | Marketing Machine | Hiring Manager: Caroline van der Merwe

We're not hiring a marketer. We're hiring the person who owns Jem's story.

⭐️ ABOUT JEM

Jem is a WhatsApp-native HR and employee benefits platform built for the companies that employ South Africa’s deskless workforce. 200,000+ employees on platform. Pre-Series A, R60m raised, backed by Next176. Our product sits on a phone most workers already have, replaces manual HR workflows, and gives workers access to earned wage access, savings tools, and financial services,  all through WhatsApp.

Our sectors: security, manufacturing, transport, logistics, waste, mining, retail. Our buyers: HR Directors, CFOs, and Ops leaders at companies with 500 - 10,000+ employees.

⭐️ WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW

We’re not filling a marketing vacancy. We’re hiring the person who will set Jem’s narrative and ensure it lands consistently across events, content, sales conversations, and investor rooms.

The role exists at the intersection of three things: brand authority, commercial rigour, and external presence. Events are our primary credibility engine in 2026. Content needs to reach the right decision-makers repeatedly. The sales team needs sharper tools. And Jem needs a face and a voice that can hold a room.

Marketing at Jem is not an independent empire. It is a support function to sales, and this role exists to make that function work commercially.

⭐️ WHAT YOU’LL OWN

• Jem’s brand narrative, positioning, and category POV,  the story we tell and how consistently we tell it. 


• Marketing strategy execution: events as the primary credibility engine, account-based marketing, content distribution that reaches enterprise decision-makers


• Commercial alignment between marketing and sales: the content, enablement materials, and timing that helps deals close


• Jem’s external presence: events, media, industry stages, investor narrative, and customer storytelling


• Leadership of a small, AI-augmented marketing team, Marketing Lead, Content Creator, and multiple AI agents


• Quality gate on everything the team produces, including agent-generated output
  


• Product marketing discipline: preventing the “I didn’t know Jem does that” problem at enterprise level

⭐️ WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• +10 years of marketing experience, with meaningful time at startups or early-stage scale-ups where you had to build, not just manage


• A narrative thinker: someone who can take a complex dual-sided product and turn it into a story a CFO repeats to their HR Director


• Commercial literacy: you think in pipeline, CAC, and retention,  not just reach, impressions, and share of voice


• Confident on stage and in rooms: events are central to this strategy, and you’re part of the engine, not just the logistics


• AI-fluent: you already use AI tools in your day-to-day workflow. Not exploring it. Using it.


• A team builder who understands that a small team + well-built AI agents can outperform a bloated team if the systems are right


• B2B experience useful, not essential, we care more about your ability to understand and articulate a buyer’s world than your sector history

⭐️ WHAT WILL MAKE YOU STAND OUT

These matter more to us than certifications, brand-name employers, or years of experience.

• You built something outside of a job. A consultancy, side hustle, product you tried to monetise, a curiosity path you followed properly. It doesn’t need to have succeeded. It needs to have happened.


• You’ve built a brand people actually remember,  not just a company that ran campaigns. If you can point to a brand positioning shift you drove and explain why it worked commercially, that’s the conversation we want to have.


• You’re genuinely comfortable on stage. Presenting to 200 HR Directors at a Sandton venue is part of this role, not a footnote.


• AI is embedded in how you work, not something you’re keeping an eye on. You have workflows, tools, and opinions.


• You’ve worked somewhere resource-constrained, where “build it” was the brief, not “manage it.” You know what it feels like when there’s no playbook.

⭐️ WHAT WE WON'T CONSIDER

• Careers built entirely inside large corporates or agencies. If every role has been inside a structure that absorbed risk on your behalf, this isn’t the right environment


• Channel operators who haven’t built strategy or narrative. Strong execution without strategic depth doesn’t close the gap we need closed.


• Candidates for whom AI is a future capability, not a current one. This team runs on AI-augmented systems.

⭐️ WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM US

• Hybrid work environment with a 3-day office policy in the Cape Town/Joburg office.


• Frontline exposure to building real AI products at scale


• Direct work with enterprise customers and complex real-world systems


• High ownership, fast learning, and visible impact


• R110,000 - R140,000 monthly salary range for the role.


• Great Benefits (lunch 4 times a week, medical aid contribution, retirement annuity contribution, etc.) and 22 days of annual leave.


• We respond to all applications. You can expect feedback on your application, even if we decide not to move forward.