At Ello, our mission is to maximize the potential of all children. Our first product (Read with Ello) is an AI reading teacher that listens to a child read from real books. It uses evidence-based reading instruction to help them when they get stuck and behavioral psychology to motivate them to keep going. We’re now building on the success of Read with Ello and putting together the pieces of the world’s first complete AI teacher for children.

We’re a highly technical team building delightful learner-centered experiences which leverage the massive recent advances in AI. Our products put children on a path of lifelong learning, creating the foundation for their future and ours. Together, we believe we can close literacy and educational gaps around the world. We are backed by world-class investors, just closed a Series A, and we’re ready to bring on new talent to help achieve our vision.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator’s W20 batch and have recently closed a funding round; previously announced investors include leading US and European VCs including Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, Homebrew, WndrCo, Human Capital and K9 Ventures.

We’re a small, collaborative team that takes each other’s voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the wider community; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that we’re proud of – we believe it’s possible to do both.

Growth | Full-Time
Location: San Francisco (relocation assistance provided)

About Us

At Ello, our mission is simple and urgent: maximize the potential of every child, everywhere.

We’re building the world’s first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators.

Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories using generative AI. It works—and kids love it.

Now, we’re scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher for all children. We’re building a real-time learning platform—one that combines language, speech, and memory to power personalized, interactive education for kids worldwide. We’re moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids and families, and push the boundaries of what AI can do in education.

We’re well-funded by some of the world’s top investors, putting us in pole position to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIME’s Best Inventions and Fortune’s Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education and make high-quality instruction a reality for all children.

About the Role

We believe growth isn’t just about metrics—it’s about storytelling, creative excellence, and building a journey that feels human from the first touchpoint.

We’re looking for someone who’s excited to own this philosophy end-to-end. If bold, thoughtful, creative-led growth speaks to you, this is the place to be.

We care deeply about how things look, sound, and feel—on TikTok, in ads, in product, and across every landing page. We’re searching for a creative marketing leader to own the full funnel with both heart and rigor—combining brand, performance, and experimentation to drive real results.

You'll have both in-house and contractor resources to partner with—and the opportunity to shape and grow the team yourself.

What You’ll Own

You’ll own the creative strategy across the entire marketing funnel—from first touch to long-term retention. You’ll lead how we show up in every touch point. This will include but is not exclusive to:

• Paid marketing (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging channels)
• Organic social and influencer/UGC strategy
• Email + lifecycle marketing
• Conversion rate optimization (websites, landing pages, onboarding)

You’ll also collaborate closely with our Growth Product team to shape a product that supports the full user journey, and helps accelerate our growth.

How you’ll do it

• Understand our user journey: Become the company’s expert on our user journey; running user interviews, documenting persona’s and learning about their mindset at each stage.
• Drive performance through creativity: Develop and test high-converting creative for paid social (TikTok, Meta, and beyond), landing pages, and onboarding flows.
• Lead creative development: Brief, manage, and inspire contractors and freelancers to produce standout assets. Set the bar for quality and brand voice.
• Experiment relentlessly: Own the testing roadmap across ad creatives, funnels, and A/B experiments. Use data to iterate on what resonates and what converts.
• Grow our creative bench: Identify and manage the right partners—from UGC creators to copywriters to designers—to bring the vision to life quickly and effectively.
• Be the brand’s voice in every growth moment: Ensure consistency in tone, look, and feel across every customer touchpoint, from first impression to repeat purchase.

Who you are

• You care deeply about creative craft—headlines, pacing, storytelling, color, and hooks aren’t afterthoughts; they’re where you start.
• You’ve scaled Meta and TikTok campaigns with strong creative testing infrastructure—and you know how to turn a good ad into a great one.
• You’ve worked with creators, freelancers, or agencies and can quickly brief talent to produce assets that perform.
• You move seamlessly between left and right brain: you can talk CAC and ROAS, but you’ll also open up Figma to finesse a layout.
• You love to get into the mind of a user, and think holistically about the customer journey—from the first impression to lifecycle messaging—not just isolated campaigns.
• You’ve had to balance storytelling and performance, and you have examples of when you prioritized one over the other—and why it worked.

Bonus

• You’ve owned performance or growth marketing at a fast-moving startup (ideally Series A–C) and know how to scale what works.
• Experience in consumer education, health, parenting, or kids’ products
• Copywriting, video or design background
• Built or led a team of UGC creators, freelancers, or agencies
  
  Apply for the Job: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ello/e3addff7-44d6-419e-8920-f8633d3aaaa4

Our stack spans across various technologies, from custom-built in-house real-time ML models, to our consumer-facing mobile app, to internal infrastructure and tools. An overview of the different parts of our tech stack:

AI/Machine Learning

• Custom built child speech recognition model for real-time inference, written in C++
• Python libraries for ML prototyping and training (Pytorch, TensorFlow, sklearn, etc.)
• Infrastructure running continuous model training & fine tuning on GCP/AWS
• Applied state-of-the-art AI foundation models for adaptive applications & generative content

Mobile App

• Ello mobile app built using Unity (running on iOS/Android/Kindle).
• Custom bridging interface connecting Unity app front-end with on-device child speech model & service (ObjC/Swift on iOS and Java/Kotlin on Android)

Web Frontend

• Customer-facing and internal web portals written in React

Backend

• NestJS backend using MongoDB
• GraphQL API served over Apollo