Head of Audience and Growth in Sydney

We're looking for a Head of Audience & Growth to ensure our journalism reaches people, holds their attention, and converts that attention into sustained support. This is a senior appointment reporting directly to the CEO. It combines audience and growth strategy, content production leadership, and genuine hands-on craft, leading a team of three content and production people. You'll own conversion from reader to subscriber to recurring donor — not as a set of disconnected channel metrics, but as one system you're accountable for end to end. The headline target for your first twelve months: grow recurring monthly donors by 30%.

Key responsibilities

• Set and maintain TJI's audience strategy across every platform, including where to invest and where to stop.
• Own the funnel from social and search through to newsletter subscription and recurring donation, reported as one system.
• Advise the CEO and Board on audience performance, risks and opportunities, in plain language.
• Own all TJI social channels: strategy, calendar, formats, publishing, community management and escalation.
• Build our presence on video-first platforms without losing the established Facebook and email audience.
• Run first-hour response when a post attracts coordinated criticism, on an agreed escalation protocol.
• Own the newsletter as a product: template, segmentation, cadence, subject lines, testing and deliverability, working alongside editorial's ownership of content and curation.
• Run a disciplined testing programme and report what was learned, not just what was sent.
• Lead a small content and production team: briefs, standards, quality control, turnaround under news pressure.
• Maintain a single production calendar across content, events and community engagement, arbitrating priority when demands compete.

About you

• Six to ten years in digital publishing, news, or a cause-driven organisation, including at least two years leading people or a freelance bench.
• A track record of growing paid subscribers, members or recurring donors — a conversion outcome you were accountable for, rather than reach and impressions alone.
• Working command of email and CRM tools (newsletter platforms, automated journeys, segmentation, donor or membership records), social publishing and scheduling tools, and GA4 or equivalent.
• Evidence of composure under coordinated online criticism.
• Sufficient hands-on craft in vertical video, motion and headline writing to set a standard, brief to it, and fix work that falls short.
• The ability to explain performance to non-technical colleagues in terms they can act on, without deferring to dashboards or using data to settle questions of judgment.
• Demonstrated capacity to serve several internal clients with competing timelines, and to hold a priority call that disappoints someone.
• Cultural literacy sufficient to operate safely in this space — the chagim calendar, diaspora and Israeli framings, and the internal geography of Australian Jewry.
• Acceptance of the editorial boundary and the temperament to work productively within it.

About us

The Jewish Independent publishes serious, independent journalism for Australian Jewry and for everyone who wants to understand it. We report without fear or favour on a community that argues fiercely with itself — which means every editorial choice is read closely, and reaching the right people with the right work matters as much as making it. The Jewish Independent is published by Plus61J Media Pty Ltd.