Job description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that. But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens. We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better. ABOUT THE ROLE: Headway is already the largest mental health network for America's leading health plans. Very few marketing leaders get to operate at a scale where their work materially shapes how mental health care works in America. This is that role. We're looking for a Director of Payer Marketing to build and lead the function that makes Headway the most credible, trusted voice in the room whenever a payer talks about mental health. This is an enterprise B2B product marketing leader at heart — someone who translates narrative to commercial leverage, knows their audience backwards and forwards, and understands how that work builds towards outcomes: deeper relationships, stronger renewals, expanded partnerships, and better terms. This is a player-coach role for someone who is a builder at heart. You'll set the payer-marketing strategy, build and lead a small, high-caliber team, and work hand-in-hand with our Payer/Commercial, Clinical Strategy, and Provider, Patient & Brand marketing teams. WHAT YOU'LL OWN: - Set the payer marketing strategy. Define the overarching positioning, narrative, and GTM plan for Headway with health plans. The payer story is never just a payer story; it's the synthesis of everything Headway is doing across the platform. - Build the function from zero. This isn't a role where you inherit a playbook — you'll define the operating model, the team structure, the cadences, and the metrics that make payer marketing a true commercial lever. You'll create milestones without being handed a roadmap and build momentum in ambiguous, high-stakes situations. - Build the category story everyone wants to be part of. Author a point of view so strong that plans, providers, and partners orient around it. - Commercialize net-new payer solutions. Partner with Product and Payer/Commercial to take new Headway offerings to market. Define what's buyable, build the proof and positioning that moves a plan from curious to committed, and orchestrate the launch moments that convert the plan relationships you've earned into net-new revenue. - Turn clinical data into proof, and proof into leverage. Partner with Clinical Strategy and Research to source evidence and translate complex data into compelling outcomes narratives, benchmarks, and a steady drumbeat of Headway-authored insight (data stories, trend reports, category POV). - Drive field marketing and enablement. Ensure Payer/Commercial has the content library, pitch decks, RFP support, case studies, and tools to grow and deepen accounts. - Activate the story in the right rooms. Plan and execute the moments that bring the narrative to life — conference presence and customer events, executive experiences and meetings, partner co-presentations, and "to-and-through-the-payer" enablement that equips plans to market Headway to their own members during open enrollment and AEP. - Keep us on offense with competitive intelligence. Track how competitors and adjacent players (EAPs, telehealth, MSOs, vertically integrated incumbents) position to payers, and arm leadership and commercial teams with sharp, current narratives. - Measure leverage, not just funnel. Define success around relationship depth and commercial impact. YOU'D BE A GREAT FIT IF… - You're an enterprise B2B product marketing leader with 10+ years of experience (including 5+ years managing teams), and a track record where positioning, messaging, GTM, enablement, and competitive intel are your core craft — not adjacent skills. - You have experience in or adjacent to health plans, value-based care, or complex B2B healthcare environments — and you're the kind of person who gets deeply curious about the nuances of a new audience fast. Knowing your audience cold is the outcome we're hiring for; the path to get there can vary. - You can point to work where marketing moved commercial outcomes — win rates, deal terms, expansion, preferred status — not just awareness or reputation. You think about narrative as leverage. - You've done expand-after-land marketing at enterprise scale — you know how to take a solution a customer has never bought before and build the commercial case, the sales enablement, and the launch moment that gets them to commit dollars to it. You don't just deepen relationships; you convert them into new product revenue. - You have strong customer-first instincts and can influence without authority, especially in ambiguous, high-stakes moments. - You're energized by fast-moving environments — comfortable with complexity, undeterred by uncertainty. - You've built from scratch — a function, a process, a go-to-market motion — not just optimized within a system someone else stood up. You know how to create structure in ambiguity. - You're proactively curious — you'd ask to sit in on a payer call, shadow a commercial conversation, or join a leadership meeting just to build your own mental model of the landscape. You don't wait to be briefed. - You're naturally multi-threaded internally. You seek out the patient team's roadmap and the provider go-to-market because you know the payer story can only be as strong as your grasp of the whole platform. This is a rare moment — Headway is at the inflection point where scale meets credibility, and the person who builds this function will leave a lasting mark on how behavioral health is delivered and funded in America. If that sounds like the challenge you've been waiting for, we'd love to meet you. We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview. Headway participates in E-Verify. To learn more, click here. e-verify.gov A notice to Headway applicants: To protect yourself against phishing and recruitment fraud, please note that Headway only accepts applications through our official careers page at headway.co. Headway will never refer you to external websites, ask for payment or personal information, or conduct interviews via messaging apps. All official communication will come from a @findheadway.com findheadway.com email address. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from Headway via an unofficial channel, please do not share any information and report it as spam.

Requirements

Must-haves

Build the category story everyone wants to be part of. Author a point of view so strong that plans, providers, and partners orient around it.
Drive field marketing and enablement. Ensure Payer/Commercial has the content library, pitch decks, RFP support, case studies, and tools to grow and deepen accounts.
Measure leverage, not just funnel. Define success around relationship depth and commercial impact.
You have strong customer-first instincts and can influence without authority, especially in ambiguous, high-stakes moments.
You're energized by fast-moving environments — comfortable with complexity, undeterred by uncertainty.
You've built from scratch — a function, a process, a go-to-market motion — not just optimized within a system someone else stood up. You know how to create structure in ambiguity.
You're proactively curious — you'd ask to sit in on a payer call, shadow a commercial conversation, or join a leadership meeting just to build your own mental model of the landscape. You don't wait to be briefed.
You're naturally multi-threaded internally. You seek out the patient team's roadmap and the provider go-to-market because you know the payer story can only be as strong as your grasp of the whole platform.
Headway participates in E-Verify. To learn more, click here. https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/EVerifyParticipationPoster.pdf

Nice-to-haves

You can point to work where marketing moved commercial outcomes — win rates, deal terms, expansion, preferred status — not just awareness or reputation. You think about narrative as leverage.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

aigo

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick