Upwork Channel Manager

Your mission 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. Your profile What You Bring Must-Haves 3+ years of hands-on Upwork experience, ideally running a bidding operation for an agency or service business of $10m and more. Proven track record of improving funnel conversion — not just running volume. You can point to specific numbers you moved. Strong analytical skills: fluent in spreadsheets, comfortable modeling unit economics (cost per SQL, LTV, CAC), able to read funnel data and form real hypotheses. Experience managing a lead gen or BDR-style team: hiring, onboarding, performance management, compensation design. Deep familiarity with Upwork's mechanics: Connects, boosting, algorithm changes, profile optimization, client filtering, scanner/automation tools Experience bidding across multiple verticals — software development, full-stack, healthcare, logistics, CRM, fintech, or similar. Excellent written English. You will be writing and editing cover letters, proposals, and profile copy. Process discipline. You document what you do, you record data consistently, and you expect the same from your team. Judgment. You know when to enforce process and when to let a high performer operate their own way. Nice-to-Haves Experience with AI-assisted proposal generation Familiarity with LinkedIn / Email outbound Background in positioning software development agencies or AI-assisted development services. Experience working with distributed teams across Eastern Europe and other time zones. Why us?