Growth Marketing Manager, PLG
$122k - $153k USD
About Semgrep
Semgrep, the leader in code security for builders, empowers invention without friction. Teams catch, flag, and fix real issues before they ship, powered by security that learns as they build. Semgrep secures code as it’s written and provides guardrails that pave the road for developers to move fast and stay secure. Built for builders and trusted by security, Semgrep lives where developers work, delivering fixes without breaking flow, and giving security teams visibility, control, and confidence. Semgrep gets smarter as you build, with AI that learns your context to cut false positives and prioritize reachable vulnerabilities, validated by 95% of security reviewers across 6M+ findings. Semgrep makes zero false positives a reality with AppSec teams triaging 80% fewer false positives across Code and Supply Chain, dramatically shrinking the backlog.
Founded in San Francisco and backed by Menlo Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, Semgrep is recognized by Gartner in Application Security Testing and is trusted by leading organizations, including Snowflake, Dropbox, and Figma. Learn more at semgrep.dev.
About the Role
Semgrep has a large and growing base of developers and security engineers who use our product every day, many of them before they ever talk to sales. This role exists to turn that organic adoption into a scalable, measurable growth engine.
As our first dedicated PLG Growth Marketer, you'll own the motion that converts free users into pipeline: building the programs, experiments, and cross-functional alignment needed to identify high-intent users, accelerate their path to value, and route the right signals to sales at the right time. You'll sit within the Global Campaigns & Growth Marketing team and work closely with Product, Lifecycle, RevOps, and Sales to connect in-product behavior to marketing motion.
This is a high-impact, high-visibility role for someone who is equally comfortable in data and strategy, and who knows how to build in an environment where the playbook is still being written.
Location expectations
Our expectation is that this role will be hybrid - requiring 2-3 days a week in our San Francisco office.
What You'll Own
Free-to-Paid Conversion
Define and own the free-to-paid funnel from activation through opportunity conversion, with clear KPIs at every stage.
Identify and prioritize the highest-value cohorts within Semgrep's free user base based on product usage, engagement signals, and firmographic data.
Build programs including in-product, email, paid, and direct outreach that move high-intent users toward demo and sales engagement.
Product-Qualified Lead (PQL) Strategy
Partner with Product, RevOps, and Sales to define what a PQL looks like at Semgrep including what signals, thresholds, and behaviors indicate readiness to buy.
Build the infrastructure and workflows to route PQLs to the right motion: self-serve upgrade, lifecycle nurture, or sales-assisted.
Continuously refine PQL scoring based on conversion data and sales feedback.
Activation & Onboarding
Map the activation journey for new free users and identify where drop-off occurs.
Partner with Product and Lifecycle to develop onboarding touchpoints including in-product messaging, triggered emails, and targeted campaigns that reduce time to value.
Work closely with the Product team to design and run experiments across acquisition and activation stages from first touch through feature adoption using shared data to prioritize what to test and act quickly on results.
Run experiments to improve activation rates across key user segments (developers, AppSec engineers, platform teams).
Growth Experimentation
Build and maintain a structured experimentation roadmap: hypotheses, tests, results, and iteration.
Run A/B and multivariate tests across onboarding flows, landing pages, in-product prompts, and lifecycle touchpoints.
Document learnings and share them broadly so the team compounds on what works.
Audience Intelligence
Use product usage data, behavioral signals, and tools like Dreamdata and Common Room to build a nuanced understanding of who our most engaged users are and what they do before converting.
Partner with Lifecycle to develop segmented nurture paths for non-converting free users based on persona, usage pattern, and intent.
Reporting & Measurement
PLG Metrics (Self-Serve Motion) Own AARRR funnel reporting across the self-serve motion: awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue. Core metrics include free signups, activation rate, feature adoption, free-to-paid conversion, and marketing-sourced pipeline from product-led motions. This is the primary ownership of the Growth Marketer in partnership with Product.
PLS Signals (Sales-Assist Motion) In close partnership with Lifecycle Marketing and MOPs, define and monitor the product signals that indicate a user is ready for sales engagement as a Product Qualified Lead for Sales (PLS). This includes establishing the behavioral thresholds, usage patterns, and intent signals that trigger a handoff, and continuously refining those criteria based on conversion data and sales feedback.
Shared Reporting Cadence Present PLG funnel performance and PLS signal health to marketing leadership and cross-functional stakeholders on a regular cadence, with clear visibility into where the self-serve motion ends and the sales-assist motion begins.
You are ideal for this role if you
Have 4+ years of experience in growth marketing, product marketing, or a hybrid role at a B2B SaaS company with a developer or technical audience.
Have hands-on experience with a PLG or developer-led GTM motion and understand how free users behave differently from traditional MQLs and how to build programs accordingly.
Are deeply data-driven. You know how to instrument a funnel, build a cohort analysis, and turn behavioral data into a marketing program.
Are comfortable working with product and engineering teams. You don't need to code, but you speak their language and can translate between technical behavior and marketing action.
Have built or contributed to PQL frameworks and understand how to align marketing, sales, and product around a shared definition of user readiness.
Are a strong experimenter: you know how to design a test, avoid common pitfalls, and learn fast from the results.
Have experience with tools to gather product analytics; Marketo for lifecycle; Salesforce for pipeline tracking; and intent or engagement platforms like Common Room or Dreamdata.
Understand the developer and AppSec buyer and have marketed to both developers and security practitioners and know how their buying behaviors differ.
Nice to Have
Experience at a security, developer tools, or open-source company.
Familiarity with community-led growth motions and how open-source communities can serve as a top-of-funnel channel.
Experience building or contributing to a developer advocate or community program.
Background in conversion rate optimization (CRO) across landing pages, product sign-up flows and in-app prompts that push users towards an upgrade conversation.
Compensation
The estimated starting annual salary range for this position is $122,000 to $152,500 USD. The actual base salary will be determined based on a number of factors, which may include job-related skills, relevant experience, qualifications, location, internal equity, and market data. In addition to base salary, total compensation may include equity, variable compensation, and benefits. We view equity as a meaningful part of our compensation philosophy and a way for employees to share in the long-term value they help create.
Compensation ranges are reviewed regularly and may be adjusted as the role, individual performance, or market conditions evolve.
What we offer (FTE only)
Our goal is to competitively and fairly compensate every Semgrep employee with a system that equally rewards those who are vocal and those who are less comfortable making demands during the final steps of the hiring process. To that end, we generate internal compensation bands that are used when discussing and negotiating salaries. We update these based on market data to make sure they’re above the average for comparable roles.
We invest in our employees’ well-being and long-term success through a competitive, market-aligned benefits program that meets or exceeds local market standards across all of the regions in which we hire. Benefits offerings vary by location to reflect local requirements and norms. For more detailed, location-specific information, please visit Semgrep Benefits.
Who we are
We bring together people from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines—from physics and philosophy to formal methods research and full-fledged corporations. We’re new parents and new grads, dog lovers and dogfooders. We get together often to bike, bake, and meet up in parks. In our interactions, we believe respect and honesty go hand in hand, and prioritize both.
Semgrep is an equal-opportunity employer seeking a diverse range of backgrounds. We value who you are — including your cultural heritage, your socioeconomic status, your age, your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your disabilities. We value what’s vitally important to you — your family, your religion, your politics. We value what you love in this world — your music, your weekend pursuits. We believe in welcoming varied professional backgrounds, educations, and interests. If you’re exceptional in your role, believe in Semgrep’s mission, and treat Semgrep’s values as your own, you belong here.
Please Note: For US-based roles open to remote work, we are currently able to hire employees in the following states only: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.