Koala is a global furniture brand bringing Australian design and innovation to the world. We create forward-thinking products that solve problems for people and homes everywhere, driven by our purpose to make the world a more comfortable place.

We’ve always believed in doing things differently, whether in the way we develop products, how we do people and culture, or the way we bring the brand to life. That mindset has fuelled our growth, helping us disrupt categories in ways that are creative, bold and often unexpected. While we’re a household name in Australia, our journey on the global stage is only just beginning.

Since launching in 2015, our furniture has reached homes across Australia, Japan, the US and the UK. As a B Corp-certified, customer-obsessed, and data-led company, we’re committed to revolutionising furniture for generations to come through design, innovation, and meaningful sustainability.

Role Description

The Social Media & Community Lead is responsible for running, scaling, and continuously improving Koala’s local social and community in the Australian market. You own day-to-day execution, community management, creator output, and platform performance, while developing a strong local-market social plan aligned to Koala’s global social strategy.

This is a senior, hands-on role focused on delivery. You lead the local social team and partners to consistently ship high-quality, culturally relevant, platform-native work that builds brand relevance, strengthens community, and supports commercial outcomes. While not a full-time production role, you are expected to step in when needed, creating or capturing reactive, low-fi, and opportunistic content to maintain speed, authenticity, and cultural relevance.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and execution:

• Own the Australian execution of our Global organic strategy

• Execute social-first thinking and tactics that grow awareness, build engagement, and drive reach in discovery-first algorithmic social platforms.

• Own and oversee the social media budget, ensuring spend is focused in the right places to drive impact. Proactively identify opportunities to optimise investment, reallocate budget as priorities shift, and unlock efficiencies across organic, influencer and partnerships.

• Own the social content roadmap and planning frameworks for Australia, ensuring content calendars align to Global and Local brand priorities, campaigns, and platform strategies.

• Set the standards and approach for community moderation, creator engagement, and social mechanics (including giveaways), ensuring a consistent, on-brand experience across platforms.

Influencers, partnerships and community:

• Own and oversee the local market influencer and partnership ecosystem - from identifying the right creators to building long-term relationships that feel authentic and deliver impact. 

• Guide the team on who we work with, how we brief, and how we show up, ensuring creator content feels natural, on-brand, and platform-native.

• Oversee influencer and UGC output before it goes live or is amplified, keeping quality, consistency, and brand feel high.

• Shape and lead Koala’s community approach, encouraging real conversations, positive engagement, and customer connection.

• Guide the management of online community spaces, keeping them welcoming, on-brand, and genuinely useful.

• Lead social-first and community-led activations, bringing Koala to life beyond the feed when it makes sense.

Content Oversight:

• Oversee the creation and curation of compelling content across platforms, ensuring alignment with brand messaging and aesthetics

• Oversee the development of Influencer/UGC creative across all channels integrating this into organic and paid streams

• Collaborate with the Creative Team to ensure that evergreen and campaign-specific content effectively communicates Koala’s brand value proposition while staying platform-right.

• Ensure clear systems are in place for organising, storing, and accessing social, influencer, and UGC assets, enabling speed, reuse, and scale.

• While this isn’t a production role by default, you’ll occasionally jump in with low-fi, reactive content when speed, authenticity, or cultural moments matter.

Reporting Insights & Collaboration:

• Own social performance reporting and insight generation, using data to inform strategy shifts, prioritisation, and investment decisions across organic, paid, and influencer activity.

• Partner closely with the Growth team to ensure social creative, influencer content, and whitelisting strategies are optimised for paid amplification and performance outcomes.

Ideal background

A Senior Social Leader
You’ve operated at real scale - leading social strategies for brands with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers, working across high-reach organic content, always-on paid social, and influencer programs that drive measurable outcomes. You’re comfortable making decisions where social reach, engagement, and revenue are material to the business.

Social-First, Platform-Smart
You deeply understand how platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and emerging channels actually work - culturally, creatively and commercially. You know what earns attention in-feed, what drives conversation and how different formats ladder up to bigger goals. You’re fluent in social, not translating ideas from elsewhere.

Influencer & Partnership Native
You’ve led influencer and partnerships strategies before - not just sending briefs, but building ecosystems. You know how to spot the right creators, structure partnerships, balance authenticity with performance, and make influencer content work harder through whitelisting, paid amplification and community impact.

Strategically Creative
You have strong creative instincts and credibility. You can shape what great looks like, give clear feedback and partner closely with creative leads whilst still being happy to jump on low-fi, reactive content when the moment calls for it.

Insight-Led, Audience-Obsessed
Insight-Led and Audience-Obsessed: You are tuned into culture, behaviour, and platform trends, and you know how to turn insight into social ideas people want to watch, share, and engage with. Your work is grounded in audience understanding and performance signals, not personal taste or recycled trends.

A Leader and Collaborator
You’ve led or grown social creative teams and know how to give clear direction, raise the bar, and maintain momentum in a fast-moving environment. You work closely with marketing, growth, brand, and media teams to ensure social creative ladders back to broader business goals.

Commercially Minded
Commercially Minded: You understand how social creativity drives growth. You are comfortable balancing brand building and performance, organic and paid, speed and quality, to deliver measurable outcomes across social channels.

Comfortable With Ambiguity
Comfortable With Ambiguity: You thrive in fast-moving environments where platforms, formats, and priorities change quickly. You are energised by blank pages and evolving briefs, and you can create structure, repeatable formats, and momentum where none exists yet.

What Success Looks Like

• Social is clearly positioned as an equally-weighted growth and brand lever across the business

• Influencer and creator partnerships feel distinctive, consistent and commercially effective

• The social team is focused, scalable and operating with clear frameworks

• Performance insights actively shape decisions not just reporting

• Koala shows up culturally relevant, confident and unmistakably Koala on social

Treehouse Perks and Privileges

Koala is only great when its employees are happy — and we’re one happy bunch!

• Hybrid working - We’re mixing it up with ~3 days back in the Alexandria Treehouse (office) and work from bed/home (WFB)

• Take a break - Generous time off - volunteer, parental, Koala life leave and more to help keep your work-life balance, balanced.

  Treehouse goods - Fully stocked kitchen with an emphasis on healthy local produce, think bougie brekky, salad bar, kombucha on tap, monthly barbies and more.

• Pet-friendly - The Koala Treehouse is as pet-friendly as they get!

• Surprise & delight - The two-word combo at the core of everything we do. All Koalas can expect to enjoy free Koala products with ‘mates rates’ for your friends and fam.

• Support & wellbeing - Our employee experience respects and embraces all families, formed, found and evolving. You’ll have access to our Employee Assistance Program, which includes unlimited sessions for financial, work, relationship, family or wellbeing support.

• Accelerate your career - via our Learning Management platform Juno, as well as individual and team growth budgets and dedicated days.

• Community & connection - We believe that simply doing ‘no harm’ isn’t good enough So, how are we doing our part? BCorp Certified, WWF Partnership, volunteer days, a member of SoftLanding, 1% and so much more.

All in all, the Koala Kommunity is a great place to hang out and belong to!

Koalities We Look For

At Koala, we do things a little differently and we don’t shy away from the fact that we expect a lot from our employees! We are ambitious. We are curious. We are selfless. We want you to challenge expectations, always look to make a difference and give us something different from the norm. We want people that bring great energy, that have a long-game focus and are always trying to find new angles and approaches to the way we work. We're a team full of entrepreneurial spirit and have a relentless focus on 'what's next' but while always reviewing 'what's been done' and learning, growing and adapting. We're confident, but NEVER arrogant and we adapt to change like Steve Smith under a short ball. Honesty and empathy drive everything we do, as well as a total focus on exceeding our customers’ expectations. So if you feel like this could be you... well what the bloody hell are you waiting for? Drop us a line, and let's see what you've got! ;)

There’s no such thing as a ‘perfect’ candidate, Koala is a place where everyone has opportunity. So however you identify and whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this is a role that would make you excited to come into work every day. We’re an equal opportunity employer, and recognise that a diverse workforce is crucial to our success as a business.

To read more, check out our careers, LinkedIn, or the great work we do with Work180.