Head of Korea

Our mission is to reinvent the way people learn, starting with language.

Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages.

Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana.

About this role

Speak is the #1 English learning app in Korea, and we are hiring a Head of Korea to build what comes next. You'll own the entire B2C marketing engine directly for our first and largest market across brand, growth, partnerships, and creative. You’ll foster the healthy & organic brand and position we've earned while finding the next stage of profitable growth. The path you pave will also become references and the playbook for other global markets at Speak, naturally leading to a global scope.

You'll completely own the market’s budget and an experiment-driven channel portfolio spanning influencer and creator, paid UA, organic and social, and partnerships. You'll also partner with our B2B Sales and Product teams to test new acquisition and monetization levers, bringing Korea B2C insights into broader business strategies and goals. A strong-yet-lean team of marketers and designers are waiting for you - and you will provide development & direction, while hiring new members to meet growing business needs. Non-marketing functions within the Korea office (CX, B2B, People & Ops) will not report to you directly, but you'll have strong influence over the larger market operation and the culture in this office as senior leadership.

What you’ll be doing

• Own Speak Korea's B2C marketing strategy end to end, setting the direction on audience, messaging, and channel mix.

• Grow B2C ARR against the market plan while meeting blended LTV/CAC goals, owning the full funnel across app and web.

• Hold and extend our #1 position in the Education category, targeting above 50% top-of-mind awareness in our core segment and building the mid-funnel through consideration and branded search.

• Build, coach, and retain a top-tier talent across Brand, Growth, Partnerships, B2B, and Marketing Design.

• Partner with Product to prove new acquisition and monetization levers, including freemium variants, family and bundle offers, and new activation paths.

• Create B2C & B2B synergy around demand generation and market fit to strengthen Speak’s position as both a consumer & an enterprise product, working with regional & HQ B2B leaders and teams.

• Act as the bridge to SF headquarters, translating Korea insights into global playbooks and bringing global learnings back to the local market, including all the cultural nuances.

What we’re looking for

• 12+ years in integrated marketing function facing Korea market, ideally in consumer tech or high-growth startups.

• Proven full-funnel marketing leadership, spanning acquisition through retention.

• Balance between brand and performance management, assessing values of marketing actions by both qualitative & quantitative measures.

• Strong analytical and experimentation rigor, comfortable with LTV/CAC modeling and channel economics, and able to distinguish genuine result from noise.

• Demonstrated experience building, coaching, and managing marketers & designers of various levels and specialties.

• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward execution.

• Native fluency in Korean, in both the language and the market/culture.

• Business fluency in English; communicating with the global team at Speak on a daily level should not be a blocker to get things done.

• Ability to travel as needed, most often to San Francisco HQ.

While it's not required, it's an added plus if you also have:

• Senior leadership experience (director level+) at a Series C (or similar) consumer tech company.

• Experience scaling from 1 to 10, creating demand rather than only capturing it.

• Depth in Korea's influencer and creator ecosystem, with high sensitivity to creative & social trends.

• Experience managing/influencing functions beyond marketing in a given flagship/regional office.

• Personal brand & story around language learning - carrying a passion that aligns to Speak’s mission.

1. Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company.

2. Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply.

3. Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel.

4. Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives.

Speak does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.