Director of Retention

Role Summary

Alpha Lion is looking for a Director of Retention to own our retention engine end-to-end. You'll be the person who deeply understands our customers — their goals, behaviors, and why they stay (or leave) — and turns that understanding into a real competitive advantage. This is a hands-on role: you're not just setting strategy, you're in the data, in the platforms, and in the details of the post-purchase journey, identifying and executing the highest-impact ways to grow Customer Lifetime Value.

Your work directly fuels how aggressively and profitably Alpha Lion can acquire new customers.

Responsibilities

• Own the retention calendar end-to-end — offers, incentives, LTOs, launches, cross-sell, and reactivation — partnering with Brand and Growth on GTM strategy.
• Own subscription performance and economics: take rate, churn, reactivation, subscriber LTV/LTR, and contribution margin.
• Build and scale a world-class subscription and loyalty experience, from onboarding through offboarding, in partnership with Product and Operations.
• Lead lifecycle and CRM end-to-end (Email, SMS, Push) — strategy, segmentation, automated journeys, and continuous testing across messaging, offers, and timing.
• Build a customer intelligence engine: leverage behavioral data, cohorts, NPS, reviews, and zero-party data to uncover the highest-impact opportunities across the customer journey.
• Build and develop a lean, high-performing retention team, with clear ownership, KPIs, and operating cadences.

What Success Looks Like

Returning customer revenue, LTV, and contribution margin materially exceed targets, making Retention a real driver of company growth.

A subscription program that consistently improves adoption, cross-sell, and longevity — not just maintains the status quo.

A loyalty program with measurable, demonstrable impact on repeat purchase and customer value.

Customer and cohort insights that don't just live in a report — they translate into concrete actions across Retention, Product, Brand, and Acquisition

Who You Are:

You think like a business owner — you prioritize based on incremental revenue and LTV impact, not just channel-level metrics.

You combine consumer psychology with hard behavioral data to find opportunities others miss.

You're proactive — you bring solutions to the table before they become fire drills.

You're comfortable being hands-on while simultaneously building the team and systems needed to scale.

You build strong cross-functional relationships — Brand, Growth, Product, CX, Data all trust you and work well with you.

Experience & Skills:

7-10+ years in Retention, Lifecycle/CRM, or Subscription growth within DTC e-commerce, including several years in a senior or leadership capacity.

Proven track record managing a subscription book of 25,000+ active subscribers, or a clear, defensible reason your trajectory doesn't fit that exact benchmark (e.g., took a brand from 0 to meaningful scale, or ran retention for a high-LTV/lower-volume premium brand).

Demonstrable retention impact — a specific, defensible track record of moving NRR, gross churn, or LTV by meaningful points, and generating $25M+ in retention-driven revenue.

Deep, hands-on expertise across the modern retention stack: Klaviyo (email), Attentive or equivalent (SMS), Recharge/Skio/Stay or equivalent (subscription), Shopify, and the data infrastructure that connects them.

Nice to have:

Background in health, wellness, supplements, beauty, or premium lifestyle DTC.

Track record designing and executing loyalty programs at scale.

Why Alpha Lion:

Alpha Lion is a fast-growing, performance-driven brand focused on helping people unleash their Superhuman potential. We are building scalable systems, raising the bar on execution, and creating long-term competitive advantage in our category.

This role offers the opportunity to work on high-impact initiatives, learn rapidly, and grow alongside a company that values ownership, curiosity, and results. If you’re excited by optimization, experimentation, and building systems that scale, Alpha Lion is a place where your work will matter.

Application Process

Apply: Submit your resume + a brief note explaining why you’d crush it in this role.

Screen: TA team reviews for skills and cultural alignment.

Cultural + Behavioral: In this step, you will take a personality assessment to see how you will perform in the role, then review it on a call with a cultural specialist here.

Interview: Conversations with the hiring manager and team.

Final Round: Case study or work simulation (role-specific).

Decision & Offer: We move fast — typically within 2–4 weeks.