Affiliate Lead - Consumer

Kraken, part of Payward, is building the future of open finance. We encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.

The Team

Kraken's Consumer Growth team is responsible for acquiring and growing high-quality customers globally across Kraken and Krak. We are looking for an experienced affiliate operator to own and scale our existing affiliate program and build the Consumer KOL (Key Opinion Leader) and creator strategy.

This is a senior individual-contributor role with significant autonomy. You will set the global affiliate and KOL strategy, directly own affiliate and KOL execution in North America, and work closely with regional KOL and affiliate colleagues across LATAM, Europe, and APAC as this distributed team grows over time. You will decide which affiliate and KOL partners to recruit, scale, improve, or exit; determine how channel budgets are allocated across partners; and personally lead our most important partner relationships. Success means incremental funded customers who retain and create long-term value, achieving our payback targets — not more links, clicks, or low-cost sign-ups.

The Opportunity

• Own and scale the global affiliate program across Kraken and Krak. Set strategy, partner and market priorities, and investment allocation against funded customers, retained revenue, LTV, CAC, ROI, and fully loaded payback. Include all affiliate and KOL costs—retainers, CPA, revenue share, flat fees, incentives, and attributable production or activation costs—in those decisions.
• Build direct relationships with valuable affiliates, publishers, comparison sites, communities, creators, and KOLs; use networks and agencies selectively, not as a substitute for partner craft.
• Segment the portfolio by audience, model, market, and customer quality. Design and negotiate CPA, revenue share, hybrid, or quality-weighted terms that align incentives with sustainable value.
• Remain hands-on with strategic partners through evaluation, onboarding, offers, content, landing experience, verification, funding, first use, and retention. Diagnose where performance is gained or lost.
• Work with Data to create partner-level cohort views and tests that separate last-click attribution from incremental growth. Bring clear hypotheses and context; do not wait for analysts to frame the business question.
• Decide which partners to scale, improve, cap, or exit based on downstream economics and customer experience—not top-of-funnel volume alone.
• Protect the channel from brand bidding, coupon interception, promotional abuse, fraud, and low-quality traffic, working with Compliance and other partners on practical controls and escalation paths.
• Build the Consumer KOL and creator strategy, personally recruiting, activating, and scaling high-potential KOLs and creators. Set objectives, briefs, commercial models, and measurement suited to each partnership; do not force every creator into a performance-affiliate model.
• Adapt strategy to local customer motivations, barriers, language, regulation, and channel ecosystems. Build repeatable workflows with Performance Marketing, Product, Creative, and regional teams, using AI to improve sourcing, analysis, content operations, and monitoring while retaining human judgment and compliance review.

What You Bring

Required

• A track record of owning and scaling an affiliate program as a hands-on operator, with clear examples of improving customer and revenue economics.
• Commercial judgment across CPA, revenue share, hybrid, and incentive structures, including the ability to calculate fully loaded payback and explain why a deal creates sustainable value.
• Experience sourcing, negotiating, and growing direct partner relationships, including high-value or sensitive accounts.
• The ability to interrogate partner, funnel, cohort, and retention data and work fluently with Data to test hypotheses and make investment decisions.
• International experience adapting offers, partner mix, content, and operating approach to local customer behavior and regulatory constraints.
• Practical command of affiliate tracking, attribution, fraud and abuse controls, and brand and compliance standards.
• A builder's mindset: you create missing processes, share learning, and use AI or automation where it improves speed and quality without outsourcing judgment.

Nice to have

• Experience in crypto, fintech, or another regulated consumer business, plus exposure to creator or KOL programs where objectives extend beyond direct response.