SaaStr is Hiring a Director+ of Event & Community Experience!

What SaaStr Means by “Director+ of Event & Community Experience”

Let’s translate the title into human: SaaStr wants someone to own the attendee, sponsor, and speaker experience across its flagship eventsespecially
SaaStr Annual and SaaStr Europafrom the first moment someone thinks about buying a ticket to the last high-five at the wrap party.

The “Minute 0 to Wrap Party” mandate

Many event teams focus on “event days.” This role focuses on the whole journey:
the website experience, registration flow, pre-event comms, arrival, wayfinding, session planning, sponsor discovery, speaker prep, on-site support, networking design, post-event follow-up,
and the emotional afterglow where attendees tell their teammates, “You have to come next year.”

What you don’t have to be

The role isn’t asking you to become an A/V wizard or the final boss of catering spreadsheets. SaaStr notes it has partners to handle major production logistics.
Your job is to be the experience owner: the person who sees what attendees, speakers, and sponsors seeand makes it better.

What SaaStr wants you to be

This is a role built for someone with 4+ years in field marketing, events at scale, or closely related work,
who genuinely loves community and already understands the SaaStr universe.
In other words: you can speak both languagesmarketing outcomes and human connection.

Why This Role Matters More Than Ever

Events have changed. Attendees are pickier, budgets are scrutinized, and everyone expects the experience to feel curated, not chaotic.
At the same time, in-person events keep proving their valueespecially for B2B audiences who want real conversations, not another “Could this have been an email?” webinar.

Events are a growth engineand a trust engine

For SaaS companies, the best events do three things at once:
accelerate relationships, deliver practical learning, and create community identity.
SaaStr Annual positions itself as a major gathering for SaaS, B2B, and AI leadersbig enough to feel like an ecosystem, focused enough to feel like a tribe.

Experience is the new “secret sauce”

Content brings people in. Experience makes them come back.
The difference between “good conference” and “can’t-miss conference” is often tiny details:
clear communication, smart networking design, helpful staff, reliable session flow, and sponsor engagement that feels useful instead of pushy.

The Playbook: How to Own Attendee Experience Like a Pro

1) Build an Experience Map (and treat it like a product)

The simplest way to level up an event is to map the journey like a product manager would.
Start with the key audiences (attendee, sponsor, speaker) and plot their steps:
discovery → decision → registration → pre-event prep → arrival → daily rhythm → networking → follow-up.

Then ask two questions at each step:
“What’s the friction?” and “What’s the delight?”
The goal is not perfectionit’s measurable improvement, year over year.

2) Communication is not “marketing,” it’s operations

Great events feel calm on the surface because communication is strong underneath.
Your comms plan should act like a nervous system: clear, timely, consistent, and targeted.
If attendees are confused, sponsors feel lost, or speakers don’t know where to go, the experience cracksfast.

A strong system includes:
pre-event email sequences, schedule updates, app/portal guidance, signage logic, staff escalation routes, and post-event follow-up that’s actually helpfulnot just a “Thanks for coming!” confetti gif.
(Confetti is fine, but only after you’ve answered, “Where do I get my session recordings?”)

3) Create “instant belonging” in the first 30 minutes

Attendee confidence is fragile at arrival. The first half-hour decides whether someone feels like:
“This is going to be amazing,” or “I’m going to stand next to this plant until someone I know arrives.”

Tactics that work:
clear check-in lanes, obvious staff presence, simple wayfinding, easy “what should I do first?” guidance, and structured networking moments that reduce awkwardness.
Bonus points if you have a “first-timers” path that doesn’t feel like a kiddie table.

4) Design networking on purpose (don’t outsource it to chance)

People buy tickets for content. They remember the hallway conversations.
The best events don’t leave networking to luckthey create formats that match how busy professionals actually connect:
mentoring sessions, topic tables, curated meetups by role/stage, and low-pressure zones for conversations that aren’t shouted over DJ bass.

5) Safety, inclusion, and community standards are part of the experience

A high-trust community requires clear expectations and real support.
A strong code of conduct, visible reporting pathways, and trained staff aren’t “extra”they’re part of what makes attendees feel comfortable participating fully.

Owning Sponsor Experience Without Making It Feel Like a Mall Kiosk

Sponsors aren’t villains. They’re partners. But sponsor experience has to be designed with the same care as attendee experiencebecause
the fastest way to harm an event’s brand is letting sponsors feel ignored or letting attendees feel hunted.

1) Start with outcomes, not booth size

Great sponsor experience begins by aligning expectations:
pipeline goals, brand goals, meeting goals, talent goals, or customer expansion goals.
When you know what “success” means, you can design the right touchpointsmeetings, stages, demos, hosted dinners, or curated introductions.

2) Make discovery easy and respectful

Attendees don’t hate vendors. They hate friction.
If sponsors are easy to find, clearly categorized, and matched to attendee needs, engagement feels natural.
Helpful signage, clean event app listings, smart agenda tie-ins, and sponsor education on respectful outreach all improve outcomes.

3) Treat sponsor service like customer success

The best sponsor teams behave like CS leaders:
proactive check-ins, fast issue resolution, clear timelines, and post-event debriefs with real data.
That’s how you earn renewalswithout relying on “We had a lot of foot traffic!” as your only metric.

Speaker Experience: Because “Great Content” Needs Great Support

Speakers are not just presentersthey’re co-creators of the event’s reputation.
A speaker who feels supported shows up sharper, more relaxed, and more generous with the audience.

1) Clarity beats charisma

Even confident speakers need clarity:
deadlines, formats, AV specs, session expectations, audience profile, and what success looks like.
Make it simple. Make it consistent. Make it hard to mess up.

2) The green room is an experience

It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should be calm, stocked, and staffed.
A reliable flow for mic checks, timing, and stage transitions prevents the dreaded “Where’s the clicker?” moment.
(The clicker is never where it should be. That’s why you plan.)

3) Honor the speakers after the talk

Post-session support matters: share recording info, promote highlights, make it easy for speakers to connect with attendees, and close the loop on feedback.
Speakers who feel valued are more likely to returnand bring friends who can actually bring the house down with a great talk.

How You Prove You Made the Experience Better

“It felt better” is nice. “It performed better” is how you earn budget, trust, and the right to keep improving.
The Director+ of Event & Community Experience has to measure the experience without turning the event into a spreadsheet convention.

Event success metrics that leadership actually respects

A strong measurement plan blends quantitative and qualitative signals:
attendance and growth, engagement, satisfaction, goal achievement, and post-event feedback.
Event ROI conversations get easier when you define goals upfront and track the right KPIs across the lifecycle.

Community measurement that ties back to business outcomes

Community leaders often get stuck proving value because community impact can be indirect.
Frameworks that connect community programs to business goalsretention, acquisition, support deflection, product feedback, advocacymake results easier to communicate.
Your role isn’t just to create belonging; it’s to connect belonging to outcomes.

If You’re Applying: What to Highlight to Stand Out

1) Show that you’ve owned the whole journey

Bring examples that span before, during, and after the event:
registration and comms, session strategy, sponsor enablement, speaker operations, on-site execution, and post-event reporting.
The goal is to show you can own an experience end-to-end, not just run a checklist.

2) Tell “before/after” stories with receipts

Don’t just say you improved experienceshow how:
reduced check-in time, improved NPS, higher session attendance, more sponsor meetings, fewer support tickets, better speaker satisfaction, or higher renewal rates.
Even small improvements matter when they scale to thousands of people.

3) Prove you can partner (and still be the owner)

SaaStr emphasizes partners handle major production piecesso your job is to lead through influence:
align vendors, agencies, internal teams, and stakeholders while protecting the attendee experience.
Being “nice to work with” is not a soft skill here. It’s a core competency.

A Practical 30/60/90-Day Plan for the Role

First 30 days: Listen, map, and diagnose

• Build an experience map for attendee, sponsor, and speaker journeys.
• Review prior-year feedback, surveys, support tickets, sponsor notes, and operational retrospectives.
• Identify the top 10 “friction points” and top 10 “delight moments.”

Days 31–60: Fix the biggest frictions and standardize the system

• Ship improvements to comms cadence, onboarding flow, and on-site wayfinding.
• Create a run-of-show mindset: roles, escalation paths, and on-site decision clarity.
• Define success metrics and reporting templates for stakeholders.

Days 61–90: Scale delight (and make it repeatable)

• Design networking formats that reduce awkwardness and increase meaningful connections.
• Improve sponsor enablement and speaker support processes.
• Launch an “experience scorecard” that shows what improved and why it matters.

: What This Job Feels Like in Real Life (Experience-Based Insights)

Here’s the part no job description captures: the Director+ of Event & Community Experience lives in the gap between
what the agenda says and what humans actually experience. Your day starts weeks before the event, when you realize
a single confusing line in an email can create 200 identical questions at check-in. You rewrite it, simplify it, add one screenshot, and suddenly you’ve “saved” your on-site team from becoming an unpaid help desk.

Then there’s the sponsor side. A sponsor isn’t just buying a booth; they’re buying a moment of relevance. In practice, you spend time coaching them on how to show up:
what attendees actually want, how to offer value without being thirsty, and how to measure success beyond swag depletion. You’ll run pre-event enablement calls, translate attendee personas into sponsor strategy,
and gently (but firmly) prevent the kind of aggressive outreach that makes attendees run away like it’s a zombie movie.

Speakers? Speakers are like elite athletes: they perform better when the environment is calm. You learn quickly that speaker experience is the sum of tiny supports
an agenda that’s accurate, a green room that doesn’t feel like a storage closet, and staff who can answer questions without saying, “I’m not sure, maybe ask someone else?”
When you do it right, speakers feel taken care ofand the audience feels it too, because confidence is contagious.

During the event, your brain becomes a real-time prioritization engine. You’ll juggle “nice to have” ideas against “if we don’t fix this now, the line will stretch into the next zip code.”
Someone’s badge won’t print. A sponsor’s lead scanner isn’t syncing. A session room is over capacity. Meanwhile, a first-time attendee is quietly looking lost.
The job is being both a strategist and a first responderwithout looking stressed, because your calm becomes the team’s calm.

The most satisfying moments are oddly small: watching a first-timer find their people at a curated meetup; seeing sponsors renew because the experience felt premium;
hearing an attendee say, “I met my next VP here,” or “I finally solved a scaling problem because of one hallway chat.” Those are the outcomes you’re really designing.
And after it’s overwhen the confetti settles and the wrap party lights come back onyou’ll do the real work: pulling feedback, spotting patterns, and turning lessons into systems.
Because next year’s “magic” is just this year’s improvement plan, executed relentlessly.