Performance Manager The Pistol | Melbourne (Hybrid, 2 days in office) | Full time

Most performance roles ask you to run campaigns. This one asks you to own outcomes.

We're The Pistol, a Melbourne growth and media agency rebuilding how an agency works. We're a small, senior team building AI into how we plan, brief, optimise and report. We don't separate brand, platform and performance. It's all growth.

We're looking for a Performance Manager to drive paid media across a portfolio of major Australian brands predominantly in retail Franchise Networks, covering always-on activity and the big trading moments. You'll own performance end-to-end, from forecasting and pacing through to optimisation, reporting and where the strategy goes next.

You'll be the person clients trust with their numbers. You'll need at least 2 years of hands-on experience across Google, Meta and TikTok. This is mandatory.

What you'll do

- Drive performance strategy across paid channels, combining hands-on platform work with senior client partnership
- Turn client business objectives into insight-led performance plans tied to commercial targets
- Own pacing, optimisation and forecasting, spotting opportunities early and staying commercially accountable
- Build a clear source of truth from cross-platform data and turn it into actions that move results
- Deliver weekly,



monthly and quarterly reporting with a clear narrative, and present recommendations and business cases for growth or channel expansion
- Keep refining live campaigns and ways of working, and feed early performance signals into upcoming strategy and creative

What you'll bring

- Mandatory: 2+ years hands-on experience building, optimising and troubleshooting live campaigns in Google (Ads, GA4, Looker Studio, GTM), Meta and TikTok. Applications without this won't progress.
- 4+ years in performance marketing, including rapid-paced retail
- Working knowledge of Pinterest and YouTube
- Experience managing multiple budgets and channel mixes
- Strong grasp of key retail trading periods, including how to plan, phase and adjust investment and bidding around them
- Forecasting skills: reading market trends and seasonality, and advising on budget shifts with confidence
- Commercial nous: you know how your work affects the wider business, and where the real value sits
- Curiosity about AI and automation, and how they're changing performance marketing

How you'll be measured

- Meeting or beating client KPIs across your portfolio
- Delivery on time and on budget
- Quality of execution and insight-led recommendations
- Client satisfaction

📌 Performance Manager (Melbourne)
🏢 The Pistol
📍 Melbourne