Senior Manager, Product-Led Growth

About ApprovalMax
ApprovalMax is a fast-growing B2B SaaS company that helps businesses automate their approval workflows and financial controls. With a global team of over 100 people spanning the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa, we build software that matters and we're scaling quickly.

The Role
We’re hiring a Senior Manager, Product-Led Growth to own the self-serve funnel end-to-end at ApprovalMax — turning early PLG momentum into a scaled growth engine. ApprovalMax provides end-to-end accounts payable automation for businesses using Xero and QuickBooks Online. We have 20,000+ businesses worldwide and strong product-market fit built over 8+ years. Our PLG motion complements our sales-led motion, targeting smaller accounts where the product experience drives acquisition and conversion.

This is a senior hands-on operator role. You will be writing hypotheses, designing experiments, pulling data, running Intercom campaigns, deploying Refiner surveys, and presenting results to leadership. You must be comfortable with data end-to-end — from raw event streams through to cohort analysis, storytelling, and action. You will operate with a bias for speed — shipping weekly, not monthly.

What You’ll Do

• Own the Free Trial → Legitimate Trial Conversion Bottleneck. A Free Trial (FT) is a user who registers. A Legitimate Trial (LT) is a user who connects their accounting system — the activation moment. Once users reach LT, roughly half convert to Paid. The leverage is in getting more FTs to that activation moment.

• Diagnose and fix drop-off points in the signup-to-activation journey

• Run continuous A/B experiments on the onboarding flow — hypothesis-driven, measured, iterated weekly

• Test trust signals, messaging, and UI changes to improve confidence at the activation step

• Investigate low-converting traffic segments with Digital Marketing

• Deploy Refiner surveys to surface user intent, friction, and satisfaction at key funnel moments

Scale Interactive Product Tours

• Increase Navattic tour distribution across the website and marketing campaigns

• Expand tours beyond pre-signup into in-product onboarding for new and existing features

Activate the Intercom Messaging Engine

• Design and deploy behavioural campaigns for users stuck at activation, approaching trial expiry, or who activated but haven’t converted

• Build the post-signup email sequence — an early-stage opportunity with significant room to improve

Measurement, Attribution, and Data Culture

• Partner with Digital Marketing to complete attribution setup — every trial user tracked by source

• Track and prove incremental uplift: additional paid accounts PLG generates beyond the organic baseline

• Coach 2–3 Product Managers in using Amplitude for their own product areas

Drive the Cross-Functional Rhythm

• Establish regular sync with Product Marketing and Digital Marketing from day one — shared hypotheses, data, and priorities

• Feed product insights back to Product Managers: adoption patterns, churn signals, and expansion triggers

Use AI to Accelerate Everything

• Speed up experiment design, analysis, and content creation using AI tools

• Produce design mockups and prototypes for onboarding experiments without waiting for a designer

• Stay current with new AI tools that increase PLG velocity and quality

What This Role Does Not Own

• Platform-wide UX standards: the Head of Product Experience owns UX vision and design system governance. You collaborate on PLG-specific UX but don’t set platform-wide standards.

• Website design and SEO: Digital Marketing owns traffic acquisition. You collaborate on conversion optimisation.

• Core product development: you influence the roadmap with PLG data; Product Managers own their domains.

Must-Have's

• Proven PLG track record — you’ve owned a self-serve funnel in B2B SaaS and moved conversion metrics materially. Not ‘contributed to’ — owned.

• Deep data fluency — comfortable pulling event streams, segmenting cohorts, building charts, telling the story, and acting on it

• Experiment velocity — shipped multiple A/B experiments per month, not per quarter

• Hypothesis-driven mindset — every initiative framed as ‘We believe [X] because [Y], and we’ll know by measuring [Z]’

• Cross-functional influencer — worked across Marketing, Product, and Sales without needing positional authority

• People management — you will hire and manage the PLG Lead. This is a people manager role.

• AI-fluent — you actively use AI tools to increase your speed and output

• Strong communicator — credible, concise, and comfortable presenting data-driven narratives to senior leadership

Nice-to-Have

• Integration-gated SaaS experience — products requiring users to connect external systems before activation

• Intercom or equivalent in-app messaging — behavioural campaigns, not just broadcast messages

• Accounting or fintech SaaS experience — understanding the bookkeeper/accountant buyer persona

• Design capability — can produce low-fidelity wireframes and Figma mockups

What Success Looks Like

Within 12 months:

• FT→LT conversion rate meaningfully improved with clear data showing which changes drove it

• PLG incremental uplift demonstrably covering the team’s investment

• Intercom campaigns driving measurable retention improvement

• Attribution complete, experiments running continuously

• AI embedded across the PLG workflow as standard practice

This Role Is Not For You If

• You prefer strategy decks over shipping experiments — this role is about doing, not presenting

• You need a large team around you to execute — this is a two-person unit that moves fast

• You’re not comfortable owning numbers and being held accountable for conversion metrics

Compensation & Benefits

• Growing international business with 10,000+ subscribers

• Regular performance-based compensation reviews

• 26 days of paid time off

• 1 additional day off for your birthday

• Remote office assistance

• Service-years recognition financial reward

• Regular performance-based compensation reviews