Company: Paloma Software (palomaparties.com)

Location: Remote or Ottawa

Type: Full-time

About Paloma

Paloma makes it easier for people to plan and book private parties and events, and easier for venues and vendors to deliver incredible experiences at scale.

We started with a problem we ran into ourselves: finding the right venue for a moderately sized gathering is not nearly as simple as it should be. That quickly led to a deeper realization that the complexity exists on both sides, and there are considerable inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Our customers are hospitality experts. They know that incredible service, trust, and attention to detail are the foundation of great events, and Paloma is not trying to replace that. We’re building a system that supports those relationships, that uses technology where it makes sense to remove friction and adapt to modern guest behaviour. We want to make the personal interactions our guests and customers have that much richer, clearer, and more memorable.

Our vision is to make it as easy to book an event for fifty as it is a table for two. We have early product-market fit, the resources to scale, and are just getting started.

The Role

We’re looking for a Founding Marketer to take the spark from a handful of early customers and turn it into durable awareness, credibility, and pull.

There is near-zero awareness of Paloma in the world today. We’ve done very little marketing, and most people don’t yet understand what we do or the problems we solve. This is a near-blank slate. You’ll build and evolve the core marketing surfaces that matter early on, fill gaps we haven’t yet named, and put systems in place that let marketing run without constant heroics.

This is a highly hands-on role. You’ll be writing, building, organizing, and putting real work into the world early on, while also helping decide what’s worth building at all. We care deeply about taste, clarity, and judgment — especially in how Paloma lands with people encountering us for the first time and over time.

As a founding team member, you’ll build our marketing engine, grounding what we do in real signals from customers, the market, and how Paloma is actually perceived.

What You’ll Build

We’re not marketing experts, and we’re intentionally not prescribing a full playbook. Part of this role is helping us figure out what actually matters at this stage, and then building it well.

Some of the areas you’ll work in include:

Narrative, Positioning & Proof

Clarifying what Paloma is, who it’s for, and why it’s different — and backing that up with real customer stories, examples, and signals that help people understand and trust us.

Everyday Marketing Output

Building awareness through consistent, hands-on work: getting Paloma in front of real people via social posts, short updates, launch notes, simple emails, and other lightweight content.

Foundational Marketing Systems

Putting in place the basics that let marketing compound: lead tracking, simple CRM or pipelines, flywheels, and lightweight reporting. Over time, we should be able to see clear signals that your work is creating momentum — more conversations, more inbound, and a steadily growing top of funnel.

How We Think About Marketing

We treat marketing as something that runs through everything. Since people don’t use Paloma every day, the way we explain things, name things, and repeat ideas consistently really matters.

This role helps keep that throughline intact — across the product, our communications, and what people see in the world.

Because the team is small, marketing is tightly coupled to reality. What we say should always be grounded in how the product actually works and how customers actually use it. The goal is coherence over cleverness, and momentum that builds naturally over time.

Why you’re a great fit

You’ve worked at startups and have lived through real uncertainty. You understand that early progress is rarely linear, and you care deeply about business impact over activity or appearances.

You’re a generalist by necessity and by choice. You’re comfortable wearing whatever hat is needed, learning as you go, and taking responsibility for outcomes even when the path isn’t obvious.

You value simplicity and momentum. If something is working, you let it keep working — but you know how to surface opportunities for improvement at the right moment, without overcomplicating or creating systems that require disproportionate amounts of training.

You hold strong opinions, loosely held. You’re willing to commit, test, learn, and change your mind as new signals emerge. You’re curious about how modern tools, including AI, shifts what’s possible, and you’re thoughtful about where they genuinely add leverage.

You’re data-obsessed in a practical way. You care about signals, feedback loops, and trends, not vanity metrics. You know which levers are worth tuning — and which ones can produce misleading or harmful outcomes if optimized blindly. You want to understand what’s driving awareness, where interest is coming from, and whether momentum is actually building, and you’re comfortable setting up lightweight systems to make that visible.

You’re self-directed, but you value collaboration. You recognize that regular check-ins, shared context, and open brainstorming compound over time.

You’re transparent about what you’re working on, what’s going well, and where you have concerns. You share learnings and mistakes openly, and help create an environment where others do the same.

You care deeply about follow-through. You know the last 10% is often most of the work, and you set expectations accordingly.

You’re a thoughtful communicator with strong taste. You think carefully about how words land, how ideas repeat, and how consistency shapes trust — across product language, emails, posts, and conversations.

Above all, you’re excited to help shape how Paloma shows up in the world, and to build something real for real people.

Our Culture

Guest and Customer Obsession

Customer obsession is a given in software, but our space demands guest and customer obsession. The guests is our customers’ customer, every detail of their experience - from first touch to final interaction matters. We adhere to the unreasonable hospitality mindset and push past norms to create delight, learning deeply by asking “why” as many times as it takes in order to innovate.

Life-Work Balance

We’re building for the long term with practices that scale; no hero culture, no endless crunches, no always-on expectations. Deep work time is protected, but we recognize home and family life will always come first.

We believe time fully off is essential to long term productivity and mental health. We are also designing the team to be as resilient as the software itself, with no single point of failure, and being offline helps exercise this.

This is a startup, there will always be moments of pressure and urgency. Our approach is to build a resilient team with shared goals that can back each other up, which is our formula for long-term success.

People First

Achieving great outcomes over the long term means spending a lot of time together, and enjoying that time spent. We’d rather hire great people who want to be great to work with. That matters more to us than resumes or past deliverables, and it’s why this role is full-time rather than contract.

Transparent, Trustworthy Mindset

Our company isn’t built to squeeze pennies out of processes. We want to make a positive and lasting impact in the hospitality industry. This applies to the type of work we deliver, how our business earns its revenue (fairly), and who we’re accountable to (our investors, whom we love because they are also good people).

We strive to understand the externalities our product carries and ensure our customers are always fully aware that their data is owned by them and never sold.

We Like to Party, Learn

We started Paloma because we value gathering with people and wanted to apply our skills while learning deeply in this space. When appropriate, we celebrate wins responsibly and learn from losses in a data-focused, blameless, and continuously improving culture.

Hiring Process

We have great respect for time, and want to focus on finding the best mutual fit for this role. The below may be adjusted based on your skills and experience.

1. Initial Conversation (45 min)

Get to know each other. Discuss your background, our vision, and what you're looking for in your next role.

2. Experience Deep Dive (60 min)

Explore your past work and approach. We'll discuss real challenges you've solved, decisions made, and how you think about making an impact.

3. Create Together (60 min)

Work on a realistic marketing problem or system similar to something we’ll encounter in the business. You can choose the format:

• Live collaboration: Brainstorm and develop together in real-time

• Take-home: Up to 2 hours on your own schedule with follow-up discussion

We focus on problem-solving approach, measurement, and communication.

4. Team & Vision Alignment (45 min)

Meet the team and dig into working style, company vision, and mutual fit. This is for you to evaluate us as much as us evaluating you.

5. Final Discussion (30 min)

Cover compensation, equity, logistics, and next steps. If we're both excited, we'll move quickly to an offer.

Rough time commitment to reach offer stage: ~4-5 hours over 2-3 weeks

Compensation and Benefits

Salary and Equity

This is a founding-stage role, and compensation reflects that: $110k - $150k CAD depending on experience and impact, with meaningful stock options for those building with us from the ground up.

Benefits and Perks

• Group Health Benefits

• PTO - 4 weeks a year paid, and you’re encouraged to use it

• Equipment - MacBook Air / Pro, monitors, accessories

• Office - we’ll have a place to gather as often as needed

• Fully Remote or Hybrid

• Flexible hours - core overlap time, but otherwise work when you’re at your best

• Quarterly (or more frequently) offsites

Work Environment

The core team is in Ottawa, Ontario. We value in-person collaboration, but also deep work to enable craftsmanship above having butts in seats. We want to build the best team possible, so we’ll all travel to Ottawa or other mutually agreed upon locations to get in sync as needed.

If you’re in Ottawa and prefer working from an office, we’ll make sure you have access to one —whether that’s shared coworking space or a dedicated office as the team grows.

We use Slack for inter-team text communication, but fully respect DND and off-hours settings. We will use Google Meet when not in person. We favor ad hoc meetings to scheduled meetings, and aim to limit and scrutinize all the latter.

Why Join Paloma?

We’re a small, scrappy team building technology for people, using the best tools available. We care deeply about designing and building a business that has impact, supports a good life, and is shaped by working with people we respect and learn from while building products for real people.

We’ve established product-market fit with early customers and are ready to scale. Building technology in 2026 is exhilarating, and applying that energy to a people-centric product at the earliest stage is a rare opportunity to help shape something meaningful, with the potential to grow into something truly significant.

Apply With

• A brief note about why you're interested

• Your resume or LinkedIn profile

• Links to writing, websites, or anything else publicly visible you’ve worked on

• Any questions about the role or company

We’re actively looking to fill this role and will respond promptly.