Head of Brand Marketing

About KUNGFU.AI

KUNGFU.AI is an AI-native management consulting and engineering firm. We partner with ambitious organizations through multi-year cycles of transformation to help them compete and lead in the age of AI. Our work spans AI strategy, applied machine learning and engineering, and the operationalization of AI into real products, processes, and decision systems.

We are not a slideware consultancy. We design and build production-grade AI systems that drive measurable business outcomes, not pilots that never reach production. Since 2018 we have delivered 120+ engagements on time and on budget, at a 4.5 out of 5 average client satisfaction score, with an average client relationship of 1.4 years. Our clients include Google, Indeed, Johns Hopkins, Keller Williams, SXSW, WM, the Department of Defense, and UT Austin. Gartner cited us among emerging AI-native providers in January 2026.

Outside of client work, our team includes artists, athletes, musicians, board members, parents, volunteers, and lifelong learners. We value curiosity, craftsmanship, and care for one another.

The Role

KUNGFU.AI is hiring a Head of Brand Marketing, a director-level role reporting to the CMO, to own how the market hears us: content, public relations, analyst relations, events, and the brand itself.

Our growth is concentrated in industries where the stakes and the rules are unusually specific. Healthcare and life sciences. Government and defense contracting. Regulated and specialized markets where your buyer answers to the FDA, an accreditor, or a contracting officer, where procurement has its own physics, and where a general claim about AI transformation is worse than saying nothing at all.

So this is a role for someone who can go narrow. Choose a real problem that a Chief Medical Information Officer, a VP of Regulatory Affairs, or a capture lead actually has. Learn it properly, including the standard, the regulator, and the deadline that make it urgent. Then explain in short, plain, unhedged language why KUNGFU.AI is the right answer to that problem, with a number in it. That is a rarer skill than writing well, and it is the one we are buying.

You will not be starting cold. You will have 120+ delivered engagements to draw on, engineers and strategists with real depth in these sectors, five Gartner reports that cite us, and a team that will sit with you for as long as it takes to get a claim right.

You will also start with a book. Wayfinding, by our CEO Stephen Straus and Sr. AI Strategist, Ben Szuhaj, publishes with BenBella on 20 October 2026. Launch week is the largest single brand moment in the company's history, and it lands in your first quarter.

What You'll Own

Sector Content & Buyer Translation

• Build the sector content engine. For each priority sub-sector: a named buyer, the problem they are accountable for, the proof we can bring, and the assets that carry it. Nothing ships without all four.
• Produce at volume, with aim. We expect significantly more content than we make today, and we expect nearly all of it to trace back to a named buyer in a named sub-sector.
• Learn the domain properly. Interview our engineers, delivery leads, and clients. Know the regulation, the accreditation, the acquisition vehicle, and the deadline that turn an interesting capability into an urgent purchase.
• Write to three rules. Lead with the fear or the relief, not the method. Put a number in every claim, because a CFO is being asked to justify one. Name the regulator, the standard, or the deadline, because in these markets a date persuades where an adjective does not.
• Translate our service offerings into buyer language, with a stated outcome, a target buyer, and a proof point behind each, so the value is obvious to a buying committee before anyone gets in a room with them.
• Hold the line between sector specificity and one coherent company. Six sub-sector stories should still add up to a single firm with a point of view and brand equity that gets stronger with each new story.

Public Relations

• Own PR outright: agency and contractor selection, management, and the standard we hold them to, including vertical specialists in our priority sectors.
• Build the trade press bench alongside the national one. In these industries, the publication your buyer actually reads is often the one nobody outside the sector has heard of.
• Make our proof public. We have the client outcomes, the satisfaction scores, and the named logos. Your job is to get them in front of the people who write about these markets.

Analyst Relations

• Own the analyst program day to day alongside the CMO, starting with Gartner, where we are already cited and already in inquiry.
• Move us from cited to sourced: briefing cadence, inquiry strategy, evaluations and market guides, and a serious effort at inclusion where we qualify.
• Turn analyst validation into sales currency. A citation nobody in the buying committee ever sees is not validation.

Events, External & Internal

• Own the event portfolio and the standard it is held to. Every event we run carries a cost per qualified opportunity, and you will have the authority to move money toward the formats that earn it.
• Go where these buyers actually go. Sector conferences and accreditation bodies, executive roundtables, industry days and matchmaking events, the client advisory board, and the dinners and briefings that move a buying committee.
• Own the speaking program end to end, including intake, selection, preparation, and a clear read on what each opportunity returned.
• Own internal events and employer brand: the all-hands, the offsite, Lab Days, and the culture moments that make an Inc. Best Workplaces award true rather than decorative. This company has something worth showing people, including the candidates we want to hire.

What You Bring

Experience

• 8+ years across brand, content, communications, or product marketing, including at least two years owning outcomes in a lead role, ideally at a B2B professional services, consulting, or enterprise technology company.
• Proven work in at least one highly regulated or specialized industry: healthcare, life sciences, government or defense contracting, or financial services. You understand how those buyers evaluate, what compliance does to a timeline, and why general messaging fails there.
• A portfolio of sector-specific work. Send us the piece written for one narrow buyer that outperformed everything general you have made.
• A track record of getting technical depth out of experts and onto the page. You interview well, you read the primary source, and you do not hand a subject-matter expert a blank document.
• Demonstrable earned media results. Not a list of agencies you managed, but placements you can point to and the story of how you got them.
• Direct analyst relations experience with Gartner, Forrester, IDC, or comparable, including briefings and evaluations rather than subscription management alone.
• A track record running events that were measured, including the ones you killed.
• Hands-on comfort directing AI tooling for research, drafting, and production, with clear judgment about where the human editor belongs. In regulated sectors that judgment is the whole job.
• Category creation, book, or executive platform launch experience is a strong advantage.

Competencies

• You go narrow by instinct. Given a broad brief you ask which buyer, in which sub-sector, with which problem, before you ask about format.
• You write short. You can say a complicated thing in one sentence a busy executive will actually finish, without flattening the substance. Our engineers will notice if you do.
• You are both the architect and the operator. This role designs the program and writes the piece.
• You measure brand work. You can defend share of voice, earned placements, and cost per opportunity in the same conversation as pipeline, and you argue for the long-horizon work with the same rigor.
• You lead without a large team today, direct external partners well, and are ready to hire and coach as headcount is added.
• You are comfortable in a fast-moving, remote-first, entrepreneurial environment, and you would rather build the function than inherit one.

Your First 90 Days

• Day 30. Wayfinding launch support locked with lead capture designed into every touch. A content plan for our lead sub-sectors, with a named buyer and a named problem behind each. PR partner selected. Analyst briefing cadence set.
• Day 60. Launch week delivered, 19 to 25 October. First sector content set live for healthcare and life sciences. First vertical roundtable held. Every live service offering carries a written outcome in buyer language.
• Day 90. A sector content engine producing on a predictable cadence rather than in bursts. An earned-media cadence running rather than starting. A named category with evidence that it is traveling. A plan for the next four quarters that names what it is stopping as clearly as what it is starting.

How We Will Measure This Role

Content published against a named buyer and sub-sector, as a share of everything we publish. Earned placements per vertical, per quarter, including trade press our buyers actually read. Analyst briefings held and evaluations entered. Cost per qualified opportunity on every event we run. Share of AI-generated answers in our lead verticals. Offering pages that state an outcome. Employer brand measured in qualified applicants for hard roles.

Some brand outcomes take longer than a quarter to show up, and we know it. We are not going to pretend a brand hire is a lead generation hire with better taste. We will hold the leading indicators tightly and the lagging ones honestly.

What This Job Is Not

It is not a content-calendar role, and it is not a volume-for-its-own-sake role. Publishing more of what already exists is not the assignment. It is not a design and swag role. It is not a role where the agency does the thinking. And it is not a role for someone who needs a large team or a settled organization to do their best work.