Senior Content Programming Manager
Wattpad
Senior Content Programming Manager
Wattpad
Global platform connecting readers and writers
Readers don’t come back for an app. They come back for the next episode of a story they can’t stop thinking about. The Content Growth Team’s job is to make sure every reader finds that story, and then the next one.
We’re looking for a senior content programmer to own how our series are discovered, pitched, and sustained inside our app. You’ll sit at the intersection of editorial taste, readership data, and product. You’ll read a series and know who it’s for, why they’ll love it, and exactly which panel and line will hook them. Then you’ll prove it with data and build the programming system that scales it.
This is not an external marketing role. Think of it as curation at platform scale. You’ll decide where our recommendation models and automated components do the work best, where a human hand-pick or tailored pitch makes the difference, and how the two come together into a holistic and irresistible discovery experience for the reader.
Drive cumulative growth through Title Lifecycle Management
Map out and manage the growth trajectory of a series from launch to completion. Ensure high-potential stories find their right core audience early on, and strategically scale them to broader segments to drive cumulative growth over time.
Master narrative timing and pacing: Recognize that not every series hooks readers in chapter one. Identify "slow burn" narratives and understand the story's flow to determine the exact right timing to push a series for maximum payoff.
Read stories like an editor, pitch them like a marketer
Analyze series across genres, tropes, and formats to identify core hooks, emotional payoffs, and the reader groups most likely to connect with them. Then go beyond “Is this good?” to “What is this good for?”: match each title to the specific goal it can deliver.
Understand how scroll-based storytelling and weekly serialization shape reader behavior, including cliffhanger structure, season breaks, hiatuses, and binge-able backlogs, and plan programming around that rhythm.
Develop the creative pitch for each title: select key panels, write and direct in-app copy (titles, taglines, banners, push and inbox copy), and define how a story should be presented to different audiences.
Turn readership data into programming opportunities
Build and maintain readership segments based on what people read (genre, trope, category, reading depth, and habit).
Identify which titles can drive sustained, habitual reading for each segment, and bring forward concrete opportunities: underexposed series, cross-genre bridges, backlog revivals, and timing around new seasons or completions.
Design, run, and read experiments (A/B tests on placements, creatives, and copy) and turn the results into repeatable playbooks.
Orchestrate the human and the algorithm
Map the platform’s native discovery surfaces, including recommendation models, new-release components, rankings, and personalized feeds, and define clearly what each one should own.
Decide where human curation adds the most value: editorial collections, launch support, seasonal and cultural moments, and tailored pitches for high-value or at-risk segments.
Design a holistic reader journey where algorithmic recommendations and human-curated pitches work seamlessly together, ensuring the user always receives the best possible title pitch.
Partner with product, data science, and engineering to improve recommendation inputs (tagging, metadata, cold-start strategy) and to shape new curation features.
Lead across teams
Work closely with content/editorial, localization, CRM, product, data, and creative teams in both the U.S. and Korea.
7+ years of experience in content programming, editorial curation, merchandising, or content marketing for a digital content platform such as webcomics/comics, streaming video, music, publishing, games, or similar.
Strong story analysis skills. You can break down narrative structure, character appeal, tropes, and tone, and explain why a story works and for whom.
Exceptional writing and editorial judgment. You possess a deep literary and cultural understanding that allows you to read fiction critically, pinpoint its core appeal, and craft compelling pitches (copywriting) that convert casual scrollers into loyal readers.
Hands-on data skills. You’re comfortable defining segments, building cohort and retention analyses, and working with dashboards, and you’re proficient in SQL or able to work independently with analysts on complex queries.
Experience running in-app or on-platform experiments and translating results into programming decisions.
A working understanding of how recommendation systems and personalization work, enough to collaborate with data scientists and know where algorithms fall short.
Deep familiarity with U.S. readers and pop culture, including genre fandoms, romance and fantasy communities, and social media reading trends
Experience with webcomics, manga, comics, web novels, or other serialized content.
Hands-on experience with CRM and customer engagement platforms such as Braze, including segmentation, in-app messaging, and push campaigns.
Strong AI literacy, with practical experience using AI tools to speed up content analysis, copy development, and data work.
Familiarity with monetization models for serialized content (pay-per-episode, wait-for-free, coins, subscriptions).
Experience shaping product requirements for curation or discovery features.
Korean language ability, or experience working with Korean teams and content.
Wattpad connects a global community of 90 million readers and writers on a social storytelling platform. Users create, share, and discover stories, building a network around serialized and diverse narratives. The platform monetizes through ads, premium subscriptions, and content monetization, including partnerships with entertainment companies to adapt popular stories into books, movies, and TV series via Wattpad Studios. Wattpad Books publishes popular platform stories as physical books worldwide. Unlike many platforms, Wattpad combines user-generated storytelling with media adaptation and traditional publishing, creating multiple revenue streams while expanding audience reach. Its goal is to give diverse voices a path from digital storytelling to broader audiences through publishing and adaptation.
Explore more opportunities at Wattpad