Head of Content

New York City
Full-time
$150,000-$190,000
Posted Nov 10, 2026

Skills

Paid Ads

Job description

A Note From the Founder

Citizen has the most compelling real-world footage on the internet, captured live by people who were there. Almost none of it travels. Search TikTok for Citizen today and you will scroll a long way before you find us. I want the person who fixes that: someone who lives on these platforms, knows what stops a thumb, and can walk into our office and walk out with twenty pieces of content. You find what works organically, put money behind it, and prove it brings people into the app. You run it with creators, agents and a budget, not a department.

The Role

Citizen is the #1 safety app in the U.S. Every day, thousands of videos are captured live at the scene of real incidents and distributed in real time to people in every major American city. No other consumer product has this. It is a live network, a newsroom, and a safety tool at once, and it is growing again.

You own all Citizen content on every social channel, UGC included. This is not a creator seat. You bring in the creators, set the bar, and run the output. The job has two halves: get what happens inside Citizen seen outside it, and turn the content that wins organically into paid ads that bring in sign-ups we can count.

Why Now

Our TikTok presence has not been run seriously in about three years. Product is building ways for users to share live content straight to the platforms they already use. Founder-led and Mission Control content are on the roadmap. The footage is there, the product is ready to carry it, and nobody owns getting it onto the feed.

How We Work

Small team, in the office, AI-native. Agents clip, tag, and report; you are expected to use them and to keep handing them more of the work. We move fast, test cheaply, and kill what does not work without ceremony.

What You Will Own

1. Off-platform distribution. Rebuild Citizen's own channels on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and X from zero, with daily posting. Run the creators and clippers who carry our footage further. Set the content standard, including judgment on sensitive real-world footage. Be the marketing voice on product's in-app sharing so every share lands as distribution, not just a button.

2. Paid amplification of winning UGC. This is where the job is won.

•Spot the winners. Read every organic post on more than views: hook rate (3-second views), hold rate, shares, saves, comments. Decide within 48 to 72 hours what earns spend.

•Clear the rights up front. Usage rights, Spark Ad codes and partnership-ad access are agreed when a creator signs, not chased after a post takes off.

•Run it as paid. Put winners live as TikTok Spark Ads and Meta partnership ads from the creator's own handle. Small budgets, many concepts, fast kills. Ship enough new concepts every week to stay ahead of creative fatigue.

•Prove the sign-up. Every paid dollar is tied to sign-ups. Work with our paid media team on attribution (MMP, SKAN, post-install events) and report cost per sign-up by creator, concept and hook.

•Close the loop. The hooks that win become the next round's starting points. Creators are paid in a way that rewards performance: a base for steady output, more when their ad wins.

3. The creator roster. Recruit for gaps, not volume: creators who each speak to a different audience or angle. A personal following is not required of them. Keep briefs loose so creators can do what they are good at, and build a community they want to stay in rather than a list of one-off transactions.

4. Founder-led and Mission Control content. Package the Founder's story and the work of our Mission Control team for social.

5. Working with creative and paid. Our creative and paid media team owns brand creative and paid installs. You own content and decide which content earns spend. You brief creative when you need original work and hand winners to paid with rights cleared and the numbers attached.

Your First 90 Days

•Week 1: Twenty pieces of content out the door. Citizen's TikTok posting daily.

•Days 1-30: Audit where Citizen content already travels and who is posting it without us. Sign the first creators. Launch the first Spark Ads test with sign-up tracking in place.

•Days 31-60: A weekly winner review running: organic posts in, spend decisions out. A baseline cost per sign-up for paid UGC.

•Days 61-90: Paid UGC cost per sign-up competitive with our other paid channels. Citizen visible in TikTok search for the terms that matter. Present the twelve-month plan and the budget to run it.

How Success is Measured

•Sign-ups attributed to paid UGC, and cost per sign-up by concept and creator

•Hit rate: the share of organic posts that earn spend, and the share of those that beat our cost-per-sign-up target

•Off-platform views and follower growth on Citizen's channels

•Content volume shipped every week

•Citizen's visibility in TikTok search

•Time from a live moment to the feed: minutes, not hours

Who You Are

•You live on these platforms, daily. You know what is working this week, not last year.

•You have proof, one of two kinds: you grew a following from close to nothing (yours or a brand's), or you drove measurable sign-ups or installs to a consumer app with content.

•You have taken a post that won organically and scaled it with paid: Spark Ads, partnership ads, whitelisting. You can name the hook, the spend and the cost per acquisition from memory.

•You have made content yourself. You brief creators by showing, not with a ten-page document.

•You find creators where they already are, and they stay.

•Taste and judgment on real-world footage. You know when not to post.

•Scrappy and fast. Years of experience and the name on your degree matter less here than what you have shipped and what it did.

•Fluent in AI for content work, not just curious about it.

Compensation

$150,000-$190,000 base, plus equity.