You

• You have personally spent performance budgets and can show the numbers, ideally for a consumer product with an emotional, high-stakes purchase moment: legal, health, insurance, finance.
• You are hands on. There is no team to delegate to on day one; there is a plan to build one.
• You can write. Much of this job is words that must be clear, humane and true.
• You care that the product is defensible: everything we publish about accuracy is tested, and marketing here never writes a cheque the product cannot cash.

What we offer

• £65,000 a year.
• Real ownership: you are the marketing function, reporting to the founders, with the budget in your hands.
• A product with genuine moral weight, used by people fighting for their children and their good name.
• Founders who ship daily and publish their assumptions, including to you.
• And equity, which deserves more than a bullet point.

The equity, spelled out properly

Most job ads say "equity" and hope you will not ask questions. We would rather answer them before you ask, because the whole company is built on the idea that people deserve to see things verified.

The instrument. Your equity comes as share options under an EMI scheme, the UK government's tax advantaged framework designed precisely for early employees of small companies. EMI matters to you for three reasons. First, receiving the options costs you nothing and triggers no tax when they are granted. Second, when you exercise, you pay only the strike price agreed at the start, no matter what the shares are worth by then. Third, on a sale of the company, gains on EMI shares held long enough are typically taxed at 10% under Business Asset Disposal Relief, rather than at income tax rates. It is the best instrument UK law offers for your seat at this table, and it is the one you will get.

The vesting. Four years, with a one year cliff, then monthly. In plain terms: nothing vests during your first year; on your first anniversary a quarter of your grant vests in one step; after that, a further one forty-eighth vests every month until the full grant is yours at year four. This is the standard schedule at credible venture backed companies, chosen deliberately over founder friendly exotica. If you leave after the cliff, you keep what has vested. The schedule protects the company from a bad six months and protects you from any suggestion that your earned stake could be taken back.

The strike price, and why your timing is good. Options are granted once our current SEIS round completes, at a strike price fixed by a valuation agreed with HMRC at that moment. You would be joining at the cheapest point in the company's life that anyone after the founders will ever see. Every later hire, and every later investor, buys in above you. That gap between your strike price and what the company becomes is the entire point of joining at hire number one, and we will not pretend otherwise in either direction: it is worth a great deal if we execute, and nothing if we fail.

The size. We will agree the percentage openly in the offer conversation, at the level a first commercial hire at director level should expect at a seed stage company, and we will show you the cap table you are joining so you can see exactly where you sit in it. No mystery percentages of an undisclosed whole. You will also see the same financial model our investors see, including what the plan says your channel has to achieve. We negotiate the number in private not because it is small but because negotiating in public serves neither of us.

What it could be worth. We will not publish return fantasies in a job advertisement. What we will do, in the interview, is walk you through the same five year plan and the same valuation arithmetic we show investors, and let you apply your own judgement to it. You will be marketing this company; you should first decide whether you would buy it.

The leaver terms, stated now. Vested options survive a good leaver departure with the standard exercise window. Unvested options lapse when you leave, whoever ends the relationship. Bad leaver provisions cover the things you would expect, dishonesty and breach, not performance disagreements. You will see these terms in writing in the offer, not discover them in the scheme rules afterwards.

One more thing, because candidates at your level always wonder and rarely ask: the scheme, the HMRC valuation and the option pool are being put in place alongside the funding round itself, so your offer letter will name a grant date, not gesture at a future intention.

Apply with a short note on the best acquisition channel you ever built and one number you are proud of, to info@legallyheard.co.uk. No agencies, please.

Legally Heard Limited, company no. 17370128. We organise and verify records; we are not a law firm and give no legal advice.