{"id":1126919,"url":"https://alion.io/job/vawaa-creative-lead-artist-experiences-growth-operations","title":"Creative Lead, Artist Experiences, Growth & Operations","company":{"id":695231,"name":"VAWAA","domain":"vawaa.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/vawaa","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"ats_vendor":"Breezy","truth_index":null},"role":"Marketing","role_family":"Marketing","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US","CA"],"hiring_countries_total":2,"salary":{"min":7000,"max":8000,"currency":"USD","period":"month","gross":null,"usd_annual":96000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":6,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-22T21:05:49Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-22","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T10:59:39Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"We’re looking for a designer-turned-operator to find extraordinary artists around the world, win their trust, and turn their creative worlds into VAWAA experiences people will travel for.\nSomeone with a trained eye for design and craft, strong relationship instincts, and the commercial instinct to know which artists and experiences will resonate - and the drive to get them onboarded and launched.\n\nWe are building VAWAA. The platform for human creativity in an AI world.\nIt’s a global platform where people travel to learn directly from master artists in their studios for multi-day apprenticeships, stepping into the real rhythm of their practice and leaving changed. We are defining a new category at the intersection of travel, creativity, learning, culture, and transformation.\nVAWAA artists are extraordinary ceramicists, painters, weavers, chefs, sculptors, shoemakers, woodworkers, designers, and Indigenous makers around the world.\nOur guests are curious humans who want to make something with their hands, learn from someone extraordinary, and experience a place through its creative culture.\n95% of our guests describe their experience as life-changing. 98% of the VAWAA artists have stayed on the platform. People come to us when they want something more meaningful than another vacation.\nDemand is outpacing supply. On the other hand, we have 1,200 artists on the waitlist. Our team is small (just 5) and we’re just trying to keep up with the demand. We’ve built a really good product. Our founder built VAWAA after two decades in design and tech, and a life built around learning and traveling across 65+ countries. Our angel investors are great too, and repeat VAWAA guests.\nWe continuously improve the experience through feedback from guests and artists after every VAWAA. We observe, track and learn from guests and artists daily.\nWe build and optimize systems, workflows, and templates so we can operate with speed and clarity. We believe delivering a great experience consistently requires a very organized backstage.\nA beautiful, 10-star experience depends on 57 tiny details not falling through the cracks.\nIf you’ve played the startup game before, you know that nothing in life is certain. That said, we have strong fundamentals, we believe our mission for human creativity is meeting the moment, and our business is working.\nWe are now growing our artist community across art forms, cultures and geographies.\n The role\nWe’re looking for a Creative Lead, Artist Experiences, Growth & Operations to own the growth of VAWAA’s artist supply-from identifying exceptional artists to building the relationship, shaping their VAWAA and getting them successfully launched.\nThis is not a traditional recruiting, sales, curation, editorial or operations role. It combines elements of all five.\nYou’ll need enough creative judgment to recognize what makes an artist exceptional, enough curiosity to uncover what isn’t obvious from an application, enough commercial instinct to shape an experience people will travel for, and enough operational discipline to move dozens of artists through a complex process without losing the human relationship.\nOur immediate goal is to build the systems and pipeline to launch approximately 20-30 exceptional artists over four months, without compromising the quality bar that makes VAWAA distinctive.\nThe role will begin as a 3-4 month consulting engagement. During this period, you’ll take ownership of a priority artist pipeline while helping us build and improve the systems for curation, onboarding and launch.\nYou’ll initially own the artist journey end-to-end. As we grow, we’ll add specialist support around you. Your role is both to do the work and help build the systems that allow it to scale.\nThis is a hands-on, computer-based role that does not involve travel. You should enjoy both creative decisions and daily execution: following up, editing copy, selecting images, maintaining the CRM, and meeting launch deadlines.\n What we're looking for\nOur strongest candidates will likely be designers who became operators. It is essential that you have trained creative judgment, experience producing excellent work, and the ability to operate commercially and get things shipped.\nTrained in architecture, interior architecture, industrial or product design, or another discipline where you developed a strong understanding of materials, making, creative process and visual quality is essential. You can distinguish between work that is competent, work that is interesting and work that is genuinely distinctive and why it belongs on VAWAA.\nAt least 2-3 years of professional experience in a high-pace, high-standards creative environment such as a design or advertising agency, multidisciplinary studio, technology company or creative startup, including experience in a computer-based role requiring responsiveness, self-direction, and reliable delivery.\nRelationship management experience through outreach, partnerships, onboarding, account management, or client support. You can manage multiple relationships at once. You’re warm and curious, but can also challenge someone constructively, build trust, establish expectations and move conversations toward decisions.\nCommercially thoughtful. You can respect an artist’s practice while thinking clearly about guest demand, pricing, positioning and what makes an experience compelling.\nStrong editor with writing and visual judgment. You can identify the story inside a large amount of messy information and can turn an artist’s practice into clear, compelling content.\nHighly organized AI-native operator and systems thinker. You can manage many moving relationships, deadlines and details simultaneously. You have experience maintaining a CRM, setting project timelines and can improve how information and work are organized. You’ve already used AI and automation to coordinate multiple projects, build workflows, manage information, or increase team capacity.\nCareful execution and effective prioritization. You work efficiently, catch details, manage competing deadlines, and take responsibility for the quality of finished work without repeated reminders.\nIndependent judgment and an ownership mindset. You form an original point of view, explain your reasoning, make thoughtful decisions, and balance artist needs, guest experience, and business priorities.\nOpenness to feedback. You advocate for ideas constructively, adapt when another direction is chosen, and remain engaged in making the work successful.\nCultural sensitivity, curiosity, and mission alignment. You communicate respectfully across backgrounds and traditions and want to build a career helping a creative business grow.\nComfortable being hands-on. You may negotiate with an established artist in the morning and edit their page copy in the afternoon. This role will become more specialized as the team grows. Initially, you need to be comfortable building while doing.\nWe expect most successful candidates to have approximately 6+ years of relevant professional experience, although we care more about what you’ve owned than a specific number of years.\nAn existing network of artists, designers, makers, or cultural organizations, as well as international or cross-cultural work experience, is a plus.\n What you'll own\nFind and curate exceptional artists\nReview applications, research artists and build priority shortlists based on creative quality, distinctiveness, geography, art form and guest demand.\nLead video conversations to assess artistic mastery, communication, teaching ability, studio environment, hospitality, reliability and overall VAWAA fit.\nBuild relationships and move artists forward\nBe a primary face of VAWAA to prospective artists.\nBuild trust, understand motivations and hesitation, answer objections, establish clear next steps and help the right artists confidently decide to join.\nShape VAWAA experiences that people will travel for\nWork with artists to turn their practice into a compelling multi-day experience.\nThink about what makes the artist distinctive, what access a guest could have, what makes the experience worth traveling for, and how to balance artistic integrity with guest desire and business viability.\nDevelop and launch the story\nReview artist submissions, identify gaps, research missing context, write and edit profiles and experience descriptions, and select images that communicate the artist, process and place.\nManage contracts, content, approvals, follow-ups and launch deadlines so artists move from interest to live experience without things falling through the cracks.\nBuild systems as you go\nImprove how we screen, research, prioritize, follow up, onboard and launch artists.\nUse AI and automation thoughtfully to increase your capacity while knowing where human judgment and personal relationships matter.\nYou'll help build the operating system tat future team members can work within.\n What success looks like during the 3-4 month pilot\nLaunched 20-30 exceptional new VAWAA artists, while maintaining our quality bar.\nBuilt a strong forward pipeline of artists already committed, contracted, or moving toward launch.\nDemonstrated that you can independently identify and prioritize strong VAWAA artists and make sound decisions about who should move forward.\nBuilt trusted relationships with artists and successfully moved the right ones from interest to commitment to launch.\nStrengthened the quality and commercial potential of their VAWAAs through your creative and business judgment.\nCreated clear ownership and momentum throughout onboarding, so artists know what’s needed and continue moving forward without unnecessary delays.\nBuilt a repeatable process capable of supporting 8-10+ high-quality launches per month with significantly less Founder involvement.\nIdentified the biggest remaining bottleneck and recommended the next hire or system needed to scale.\n Other things to know\nWe are remote, but need New York working hours, with candidates living in US/Canada time zones.\nRole begins as a 3-4 month paid consulting engagement ($7-$8K/month), with compensation based on experience.\nThis is a substantial, hands-on engagement with ambitious goals. You should have sufficient capacity during the 3-4 month pilot to own the scope and deliver the agreed outcomes.\nThe engagement offers flexibility in how the work is structured, with reasonable overlap with the VAWAA team and artist schedules to keep the pipeline moving.\nFor an exceptional long-term fit, we expect the role to transition to full-time employment.\nUpon conversion to full-time:\n$95,000-$110,000 salary, depending on performance and scope.\n0.25%-0.5% equity or profit sharing options\nHealth insurance\n1 Free and discounted VAWAA experiences\nWork closely with our founder and community of artists and guests in 50+ countries + a mission that matters\nGrowth path: In 2-3 years, this role could evolve into Head of Curation / Artist Development & Supply / Artist Success with responsibility for team, strategy, systems, and growth.\n Why you shouldn’t work at VAWAA\nVAWAA is small, global and evolving. We’re working toward an ambitious goal. If you’re looking for a comfortable, highly structured job, or one that feels exciting simply because it involves travel and art, this is probably not the role for you.\nBut if you want to build a function, make real decisions, work closely with extraordinary creative people around the world and see the direct impact of your work, you’ll have unusual ownership here.\nWe value people who don't complain, keep commitments, ask clear questions, give direct updates, receive feedback without defensiveness, take responsibility when something slips, and learn quickly from mistakes.We’re remote, which requires trust, responsiveness, and strong follow-through.\n Apply\nWe are based in New York, but open to remote applications within the US and Canada.\n\nTip: You’ll stand out if you include a link to a short video telling us why you want to do this and...","description_format":"text","description_chars":12552,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":6,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"},{"name":"Canada","iso":"CA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Design & Creative"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-22T22:09:40Z"}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":7,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":96000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/vawaa-creative-lead-artist-experiences-growth-operations","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/vawaa-creative-lead-artist-experiences-growth-operations.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-24T14:03:05Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers"}}