Growth manager – Influencer Marketing, MENA

About This Role

Barcode Entertainment is a data-driven influencer marketing agency and part of the Ykone Group, a global leader in luxury and premium influencer marketing with offices across US, Europe, Asia, India and the Middle East.

While Ykone works with the world's most prestigious luxury & premium brands, Barcode brings the same rigor & capabilities (proprietary tech, deep data, and sharp creative thinking) to scalable high-growth brands across lifestyle, F&B, retail, beauty, and more.

We're now expanding our MENA presence and looking for a sharp, connected senior business development professional to help us grow in the UAE and wider region.

PLEASE DO NOT APPLY IF YOU ARE

• in a social or creative teams
• a BD professional in other adjacent industry

Role overview:

As our first & founding consultant for the MENA region, you'll be the face of Barcode in MENA.

This is a hunter role, where you'll be responsible for building a pipeline from scratch, converting brand/agency relationships into revenue, and laying the groundwork for what becomes a full regional operation.

You'll have the backing of a strong delivery team in India, proprietary influencer tech, and the credibility of the Ykone Group behind you. Your job is to open doors and close deals.

This is an initial consultant engagement (3 months) with a base salary + commissions and a natural path to a full-time regional leadership role.

Key responsibilities

• Identify and pursue new business opportunities with non-luxury brands, marketing teams, and agencies across UAE and the wider MENA region
• Leverage your relationships with brand managers, CMOs, heads of digital, and agency decision-makers to drive revenue for Barcode
• Work closely with the strategy and delivery teams in India to craft compelling, insight-led proposals, to own the full sales cycle: outreach, pitching, proposal writing, negotiation, and closure
• Represent Barcode at industry events, marketing summits, and networking forums in the region & feed market intelligence back to leadership, like what brands want, what competitors are doing, where the white space is, etc.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in brand solutions, influencer marketing sales, media/integrated marketing sales. Familiarity with the influencer marketing/creator ecosystem in MENA
• Strong existing network of brand-side and agency contacts in the MENA market is mandatory
• Comfortable with consultative selling, you can pitch data-backed influencer strategy, not just sell 1 campaign
• Self-starter mentality; you're comfortable being the only person on the ground while HQ is in a different timezone
• Strong communicator and presenter, you can own a room. Fluency in English is essential; Arabic is a bonus

Why Join Barcode?

• Ground-floor opportunity to build a market for a well-backed, globally connected agency. As MENA scales, this role has a natural path to leading the regional business.
• Tech-enabled influencer and social capabilities, with strong operational backbone from India, so you can focus on relationships and revenue without worrying about delivery.
• Competitive consultation fee + performance-linked incentives tied to revenue generated.