New Business & Growth Lead

Welcome to Hearts & Science – one of the fastest-growing full-funnel agencies. Across our offices in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Ludwigsburg, more than 200 employees bring branding and performance marketing together.

With an intuitive understanding of brands and media and a strong focus on maximum efficiency, we turn emotions – with heart and mind – into effective activations.

About the Role

As New Business & Growth Lead, you own how the agency grows: the strategy for staying relevant and profitable in a market of tight budgets and an „AI everywhere“ reality. New business and pitches are a central lever here, but not the only one. The role sits close to the management team and shapes the agency’s growth and new business agenda – driving the agency forward. A real hands-on shaping role, both within the local team and across the international agency network. You bring a lot of room to shape and visible impact, coming in at the right moment as the setup is being rethought.

Your Responsibilities

1. Growth Strategy

• Own the agency’s growth strategy: where and how the agency grows, and which offerings we need to stay relevant in a market of tight budgets and rapid AI development.

• Set the direction as a sparring partner to the management team and a driving force in the team.

• Keep the commercial view on growth: pipeline, win rates, what a pitch costs us and what it brings back, so decisions are based on numbers.

• Define how existing client business grows – new scopes, cross- and upsell – and steer this lever alongside new business.

2. New Business & Pitches

• Set up the NB system end to end: qualification and go/no-go decisions, pitch teams and roles, timelines, templates and AI-supported workflows, so it also works when you are not in the room.

• Own the holistic NB setup of the agency as a core part of the role: run it, develop it further and capture the learnings so we get better and more efficient with every round.

• Lead the decisive pitches yourself – or enable the team to do so – from the story and the pricing to the presentation in front of the client.

3. Transformation & Network

• Translate the network's capabilities, tools and cases into offerings that work in this market.

• Build growth capability in the team, so senior colleagues sell with confidence and new business is carried by more than a few people.

• Work closely with the international agency network, bringing its strengths to us and our perspective back into the network.

• Rethink how the agency operates for a market shaped by AI and tight budgets, opening up new fields of business.

What You Bring

• Several years of leadership experience in growth, new business or business development – ideally in an agency or consulting environment.

• Experience building a new-business setup incl. process, team and tooling.

• A strong business mindset: you understand the client and their actual business problem, and find the creative solution for it, not the obvious one.

• Strategic foresight paired with operational execution strength.

• Experience steering complex pitch or new-business processes.

• Confidence working with management and senior stakeholders.

• A feel for market and technology trends, especially in the context of AI and new offerings.

• Joy in shaping rather than administering – and in winning people over for it.

You don’t tick every box? Apply anyway. What counts most is business instinct, creativity and the drive to shape, not having done all of it already.