Manager, Affiliate Programs

About us HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes. To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently. Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability. Our people With over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home. Our impact Every month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. We’re proud to be a part of that. Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts Who You Are:HighLevel is seeking an experienced Manager, Affiliate Programs to lead a pod within our affiliate expansion team, the part of the affiliate program that helps HighLevel's highest-producing affiliates scale and stay motivated. At HighLevel, affiliates aren't a side channel. They drive the majority of our net-new trials. Expand owns affiliates who have already proven they can produce (100+ lifetime trials) and turns them into long-term partners who stay, scale, and move up our recognition ladder. You've done this before at scale. You've owned a book of high-profile, high-personality partners (creators, influencers, agency owners, educators with big audiences) and you know how to protect those relationships while still holding the line on policy, compliance, and the numbers. You've built and led a team of affiliate, partner or account managers, and you've grown people who were newer to the role into confident operators. You're the person who handles the hard conversation yourself. When a top affiliate is frustrated, you absorb it, resolve it with the data and the standard, and only escalate when it truly needs a Director or VP decision. You’re also incredibly empathetic and action-biased, able to help take things across the finish line and coach up a large team of Affiliate Managers to run independently with a large book of business. This role will work side by side with our existing Expand Manager and the Director, Affiliate Programs to scale the Expand motion, diversify our growing base of partners, and build the playbooks and systems our growing team needs. : What You'll Be Doing: Lead, coach, and develop a pod of Affiliate Managers (AFMs) who each own a named book of 100+ lifetime trial affiliates, running weekly 1:1s, book reviews, and performance conversations. Own your pod's trial commit, forecast, and pacing. Report weekly on wins, risks, and asks, and course-correct fast when an affiliate or AFM book is slipping. Be the escalation point for sensitive affiliate situations and resolve them at your level whenever possible. Manage the endorsement motion for your pod: scope and negotiate endorsement agreements, verify deliverables, and move contracts and payouts through the Legal, Finance, and leadership approval cascade on time. Monitor and actively grow the variety of avatars within the affiliate organization, building the next wave of top producers. Coach AFMs to coach affiliates across the full funnel with a quality-first lens: quality lead generation, quality trial conversion, and trial-to-paid, so affiliates bring in customers who stick. Partner with Land (acquisition) and Activation teams on clean affiliate handoffs, including context-building before graduation into Expand. Build, document, and continuously improve Expand playbooks, SOPs, and onboarding so newer AFMs can operate independently and leader time goes to strategy, not ad-hoc troubleshooting. Work cross-functionally with Business Development, Product Marketing, Events, Compliance, Legal, Finance, Accounts Payable, and RevOps to deliver programs, co-marketing, recognition, and payouts for your affiliates. Partner with Compliance to make sure affiliates in your pod promote HighLevel in line with our Affiliate Program Policies and step in quickly when something needs correcting. Help plan and show up for affiliate recognition moments and events (LevelUp, Commander experiences, affiliate-hosted events), and represent HighLevel with top affiliates in person. Bring insights and recommendations to leadership on where to invest next: programs, incentives, tooling, headcount, and new segments. What You'll Bring: A track record of owning and growing a large book of high-value partner, affiliate, creator, or channel relationships where revenue impact was measurable. Proven people leadership: you've hired, onboarded, coached, and held accountable a team of partner or account managers, including people early in their careers. Comfort managing high-profile, high-personality partners, including tough negotiations and emotional escalations, while staying calm, fair, and firm. Strong analytical skills. You can read a forecast, spot trends in cohort data, build a pacing view, and turn it into a clear plan. Experience with partner incentive structures, commission programs, tiered recognition, and contract or endorsement-based partnerships. Operational rigor. You build repeatable processes and documentation instead of relying on tribal knowledge. Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence senior internal stakeholders and external partners. Ability to thrive in a fast-moving, high-growth environment where priorities shift and you're expected to make good calls with imperfect information. Willingness to travel for affiliate events and key relationship meetings (approximately 1-2 times per quarter). Experience/Education/Certifications Required: 8+ years of experience in affiliate, partner, channel, creator/influencer, or strategic account management, ideally in SaaS. 3+ years of direct people management experience leading partner, affiliate, or account managers. Experience owning a multi-million dollar partner or affiliate book with forecast accountability. Preferred: Experience with affiliate platforms and tools (FirstPromoter, Tipalti, or similar), CRMs, and BI tools such as Tableau. Familiarity with the marketing agency, SMB SaaS, or creator economy space. Working knowledge of FTC endorsement guidelines and affiliate compliance. Experience with international partner markets.