This role sits at the heart of a major marketing transformation that is reshaping how AJ Bell drives paid and profitable growth. You will have the opportunity to own and evolve acquisition at scale, influence how the business thinks about customer value, and make a visible commercial impact within a well-established, purpose-led organisation operating at pace.
AJ Bell is a FTSE 250 investment platform business with a clear purpose: to help people invest with confidence. As our Direct to Consumer proposition continues to scale, we are looking for an experienced Head of Customer Acquisition to define and deliver a best-in-class acquisition strategy focused on sustainable, value-led growth.
This is a senior leadership role with end-to-end ownership of customer acquisition across our D2C brands. You will shape how we maximise demand, convert customers efficiently, and drive profitable growth through strong commercial discipline, data-led decision making and robust governance.
What you’ll be responsible for:
- Defining, owning and evolving the D2C customer acquisition strategy aligned to business growth objectives
- Owning acquisition performance end to end, with accountability for CPA, LTV, ROAS, conversion rates and revenue contribution
- Providing senior oversight across all paid acquisition channels, including search, social, display, programmatic, affiliates and partnerships
- Translating brand-led demand into efficient, value-adding conversion through strong funnel optimisation and journey design
- Setting clear investment principles and priorities across channels, balancing scale, efficiency and customer value
- Driving continuous improvement through experimentation, testing, attribution modelling and cohort analysis
- Owning the acquisition measurement and reporting framework, ensuring robust attribution, experimentation and econometric models are in place
- Leading innovation in acquisition approaches, technology and ways of working as part of the wider marketing transformation
- Building, leading and developing a high-performing acquisition function, including senior managers, with strong commercial accountability
- Acting as a senior acquisition partner across Product, Brand, Data, Technology, Finance and Compliance to embed acquisition thinking into wider business decisions
- Establishing strong governance, controls and agency relationships to ensure performance, compliance and regulatory alignment
- Supporting the delivery of good customer outcomes, including meeting regulatory expectations such as Consumer Duty
What we’re looking for:
- Extensive experience leading customer acquisition, growth marketing or performance marketing at scale
- Proven ownership of large, complex acquisition strategies with clear commercial impact
- Deep expertise across digital acquisition channels and end-to-end funnel optimisation
- Experience operating in regulated environments, with a strong understanding of governance, approvals and risk
- Advanced analytical capability, comfortable working with complex data, attribution models and insight frameworks
- A commercially minded leader who can clearly link marketing investment to revenue, profitability and value creation
- Proven experience building, leading and developing high-performing teams
- Confidence influencing senior stakeholders and agency partners without relying on formal authority
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, performance-driven environment
About us:
AJ Bell is one of the fastest-growing investment platform businesses in the UK offering an award-winning range of solutions that caters for everyone, from professional financial advisers to DIY investors with little to no experience. We have over 644,000 customers using our award-winning platform propositions to manage assets totalling more than £103.3 billion. Our customers trust us with their investments, and by continuously striving to make investing easier, we aim to help even more people take control of their financial futures.
Having listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in December 2018, AJ Bell is now a FTSE 250 company.
Headquartered in Manchester with offices in central London and Bristol, we now have over 1,500 employees and have been named one of the UK's 'Best 100 Companies to Work For’ for six consecutive years and in 2025 named a Great Place to Work®.
At AJ Bell you can expect a friendly working environment with a strong sense of teamwork, we have a great sense of pride in what we do, and this is reflected in our guiding principles.
Our perks and benefits
- Starting salary of £100k+ commensurate with experience
- Starting holiday entitlement of 28 days, increasing up to 31 days with length of service plus a holiday buy and sell scheme
- A choice of pension schemes with matched contributions up to 8%
- Discretionary bonus scheme
- Buy As You Earn (BAYE) Scheme
- PMI
- Health Cash Plan – provided by SimplyHealth
- Discounted private healthcare scheme and dental plan
- Free gym membership
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Bike loan scheme
- Sick pay+ pledge
- Enhanced maternity, paternity, and shared parental leave
- Loans for travel season tickets
- Death in service scheme
- Paid time off for volunteer work
- Charitable giving opportunities through salary sacrifice
- Calendar of social events, including monthly payday drinks, annual Christmas party, summer party and much more
- Ongoing technical training
- Professional qualification support
- Talent development programmes
- Peer recognition scheme, with rewards including restaurant and shopping vouchers or time off
- Monthly leadership breakfasts and lunches
- Casual dress code
- Access to a range of benefits from our sponsorship deals
Hybrid working
At AJ Bell, our people are the heart of our culture. We believe in building strong connections by working together. That's why we offer a hybrid working model, where you’ll spend a minimum of 50% of your working time per month in the office. For new team members, an initial period will be full-time in the office to help you immerse yourself in our business and build valuable relationships with your colleagues.
AJ Bell is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and all employees are empowered to bring their whole self to work.
We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy, religion, physical and mental disability, marital status and any other characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010. All decisions to hire are based on qualifications, merit and business need.
If you like the sound of the above, or just want to know more about the company and the role, we'd love to speak to you.
