Senior Creative Strategist, Performance Marketing

Location: California Workplace: Hybrid About Cantina: Cantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning. If you're excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions, join us in building the future! About the Role: Cantina’s marketing team is expanding! We're looking for a Senior Creative Strategist with expertise in both traditional and AI-based performance ad production and a track record of systematically developing concept-driven ads at scale that lower CPIs. In this role, you'll manage external agencies and in-house creative teams to deliver high-impact creative that drives users to download and become engaged users in Cantina. The Senior Creative Strategist, Performance Marketing will drive the creative quality and strategic direction of our paid performance marketing campaigns. What You’ll Do: - Produce and direct scaled creative across all performance marketing surfaces (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, mobile ad networks, etc) with multi-million dollar ad spend. - Develop performance creative concepts built on intimate understanding of Cantina as a product/platform and its consumer use-cases. - Build and own processes for producing high volume, iterative ads leveraging both traditional and AI-generated production. - Define creative strategies and vision for AI-generated ads. - Own creative performance analytics to track what's working and iterate on best-performing concepts and campaigns. - Set the creative inputs across creative testing plans to optimize creative. - Manage external agencies and cross-functional teams to ensure high-quality creative output across all performance marketing channels. - Lead regular creative brainstorms, reviews, and presentations to internal stakeholders, including leadership. - Oversee the QC process for in-house and external creatives: Create scalable creative review processes and quality standards that maintain excellence at high volume. - Stay up-to-date on and apply emerging technologies, production methods, and best practices in performance creative and performance marketing. What You’ll Bring: - 5+ years of experience in creative direction for performance marketing - Experience building creative testing frameworks and production pipelines at scale - Bias for clear systems and processes - Active use of AI tools, automation, and workflows - Data fluency: you can build infrastructure to ingest campaign performance data and translate insights into creative direction - Demonstrated portfolio of high-performing performance creative, particularly short-form video ads - Deep understanding of the consumer marketing landscape and channels (Meta, TikTok, etc) - Demonstrated experience collaborating effectively with external agencies and cross-functional teams - Demonstrated ability to drive measurable impact (e.g. creative quality improvements combined with quantitative performance improvements) Compensation: The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $150,000-$200,000. When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data. Benefits: - Competitive salary and generous company equity - Medical, dental, and vision insurance – 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina - 42 days of paid time off, including: - 15 PTO days - 10 sick days - 15 company holidays - 2 floating holidays - Generous parental leave & fertility support - 401(k) retirement savings plan - Lifestyle spending account – $500/month to use however you’d like - Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees - One Medical membership, and more!