Field Event Manager, SF

ABOUT EXA We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.   Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders & dropouts alike.   We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right. ABOUT THE ROLE Events are central to Exa’s marketing strategy, and the Bay Area is ground zero for the people we most want to reach: the developers building with AI and the enterprise leaders deciding how their companies adopt it. As the first Field Marketing Manager in San Francisco, you will play a key role in how prospects, partners, and customers discover and experience Exa. In this role you will own and execute highly strategic, and thoughtfully crafted events tailored for audiences across the buying group; from developer hackathons and conferences, to invite-only executive dinners and more. This is a rare, founding team member opportunity: you'll build the regional program from the ground up, concepting how buyers will interact with our brand and team, determining with sales who should be in the room, informing what will draw them in, and how each event will drive measurable pipeline at a pivotal time for Exa. This is an incredible fit for someone who sweats the details, lives to create world-class experiences, has strong instincts for what the AI builder community cares about, and obsesses over measuring the impact of every event. You will own a strategy that balances events that build brand awareness and drive pipeline including: executive dinners, networking receptions, hackathons, third-party sponsorships, partner events, and more. You'll partner strategically with Account Executives and SDRs to build an event plan that delivers coverage across the West Coast territory and key accounts. Our bar is high and our north star is to establish Exa as a world-class brand. Our team embraces gathering new learnings in order to optimize future events and processes, while staying focused on our pursuit to drive ever increasing pipeline and adoption. If this sounds exciting to you, we'd love to meet you! This role is based in person in San Francisco HQ. WHAT YOU WILL OWN Regional program strategy. Own the plan for each event in your strategy, identifying effective formats, strategic cities, target audiences, planning budgets, all while keeping our quarterly pipeline goals top of mind. Co-build the plan with input from sales and defend it with pipeline rationale. Success is measured by program quality and by pipeline sourced and influenced in the region. End-to-end execution. Own every event from concept to post-event follow-up: sourcing venues, orchestrating vendors and production, managing invitations, shaping content and messaging, and the run of show, overseeing on-site execution, and sweating every detail. Success is measured by meeting attendance, MQL and pipeline goals and by nailing execution. Sales partnership and account targeting alignment. Establish and maintain tight sales partnerships, align with sales to get the right personas and accounts to each event and create effective event playbooks that convert to pipeline. Success is measured by meetings generated and by the number of target accounts engaged through your programs. Outcomes and follow-through. Own what happens during and after each event. That includes timely lead handoff and follow-up sequences built with SDRs, Lifecycle Marketing and Marketing Ops. Success looks different by format: - Enterprise dinners and executive programs are measured by target account engagement, meetings booked and qualified opportunities. - Developer events are measured by number of new sign-ups, and repeat engagement. Budget and vendors. Own your event budgets, vendor selection and negotiation, and cost per qualified lead. Success is measured by program impact per dollar. AI-first operations. Use AI to compress operational timelines: invite-list development, personalized outreach at scale, vendor research, run-of-show generation, and post-event recaps. You'll run a tight program because the busywork is automated. WHO YOU ARE - Experienced owner: Minimum of 4 years of experience in field marketing or event marketing at a B2B technology company, including ownership of a regional program rather than execution of someone else's. - Fluent with developer and enterprise audiences: You’ve run events for technical and developer audiences as well as enterprise buyers. You know what makes a hackathon for builders worth showing up for, and what makes an executive dinner worth a CXO’s evening. Experience with AI-native audiences is a strong plus. - Demonstrated ability to drive pipeline: You have owned a pipeline number and can speak to how you forecast and report on event performance. - Evidence of strong sales partnership: You can speak to how you've built strong partnerships with sales counterparts in similar roles, including how you manage reps who push for something you know isn't the right investment. - Knowledge of what makes a world-class experience: You have a finger on the pulse of the best venues, vendors, and event tactics that will draw an audience of hard-to-reach developers, or senior technical buyers in the Bay Area and beyond. - Meticulous event budget and timeline management: You have both budget and vendor negotiation experience. - Upholds a growth mindset: You embrace feedback as a lever to fuel growth and see learnings as an opportunity to optimize for next time. - Experience using AI to drive efficiencies: You can speak to how you use AI daily to remove operational load. - Experience successfully engaging a technical audience: You can demonstrate your innate ability to shape relevant experience that engage a developer and AI-native audience and you have a deep interest to stay ahead of the trends and conversations shaping what these builders care about. NICE TO HAVE - Experience at an early-stage company where things moved fast and you had to build quickly to scale. - Have pioneered an innovative event format or strategy that you developed and successfully executed. You’ve built an interesting event playbook from scratch, brought together an unexpected group of people, or created something builders actively sought out and can speak to what worked and what you learned in detail. - Experience developing booth designs and strategies that drive lead generation. - Familiarity with event tech (registration, badge scanning, on-site capture) and how it connects to CRM. - Experience building and refining reporting to track event performance. - Demonstrated experience informing event content: from topics, speakers, and experiences that feel relevant to what people are building in AI. Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.