About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Upwork Channel Manager to take full ownership of our Upwork operation — from bidding and profile management to analytics, team leadership, and channel development. You will run one of our most important lead generation channels end-to-end, managing bids across multiple profiles and leading a team of lead generators across shifts.
This is a senior operator role. You will set the strategy, execute the day-to-day, and be held accountable for real numbers — replies, qualified calls, SQLs, and closed deals.
What You Will Own
Bidding & Proposal Strategy
Run the bidding operation end-to-end: bids per month across multiple profiles, with clear quality standards and no drops in view rates. Manage Connect spending: keep cost per SQL in healthy ranges and reconcile refunds from lost/closed jobs.
Own scanner configuration: weekly optimization of underperforming scanners, applying small iterative changes — cover letter variants, profile selection, smart boosting — and scaling what works.
Write and test cover letters: continuous A/B testing of length, opening lines, trust signals, portfolio anchors, and niche framing.
Profile & Channel Development
Optimize profiles for visibility and conversion: titles, descriptions, portfolios, keywords, and positioning. Align every profile with our current propositions, including AI-assisted development.
Launch and onboard new profiles: when the channel can absorb them, plan, launch, and season new profiles to keep the operation scaling.
Analytics & Reporting
Track the full funnel weekly: bids → views → replies → calls → SQLs → deals, by profile, by scanner, by day-of-week, by bidder.
Investigate bottlenecks: the reply-to-call conversion is the current priority. Pull the conversation data, find the patterns, test fixes, report on results.
Team Leadership
Manage the lead generation team (currently 2–3 people across shifts): set KPIs, run 1:1s, review performance, hire, onboard, and — when needed — make the hard calls on underperformers.
Build processes that scale: standardize how bids are recorded, how SQLs are qualified, how data is logged. The team needs to be measurable, not dependent on any one heroic performer.
Cross-functional Collaboration
Work with Sales: hand off SQLs cleanly to the team running qualification calls.
Work with Analytics: partner on dashboards, data exports, and attribution.
