We're a gaming analytics company with a large opted-in email audience that's gone dormant, and a growing need for serious, ongoing email operations across several properties. We're looking for an email deliverability specialist who genuinely understands how email reaches the inbox — not just how to click "send" in a campaign tool.
The immediate priority is safely reactivating a dormant list of roughly 4 million contacts and cleaning it down to a responsive, compliant subscriber base. Beyond that, we want someone who can stand up and maintain healthy sending infrastructure for ongoing newsletters and campaigns.
We specifically want someone fluent in both worlds:
- Email Service Providers (ESPs) — Amazon SES, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Klaviyo, and similar platforms; and
- Self-hosted / dedicated MTA setups — Postfix, PowerMTA, or comparable, including the DNS, IP, and reputation work they require.
We want this dual experience not because we're committed to running our own servers, but because we want an expert who can look at our volume, goals, and risk profile and recommend the right architecture — and explain the tradeoffs honestly — rather than someone who only knows one tool and fits every problem to it.
What you'll doList hygiene & data quality
- Audit and verify the full contact list using professional verification tooling (ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, Kingpin, or equivalent).
- Identify and remove invalid addresses, hard bounces, role accounts, duplicates, and known spam traps.
- Segment the list by engagement recency, data quality, and consent status.
- Build and maintain suppression lists and ongoing hygiene processes so the list stays clean over time.
Deliverability & reputation
- Design and execute domain/IP warmup schedules appropriate to the list and sending platform.
- Configure and verify authentication: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (and DNS/rDNS where self-hosting).
- Set up and monitor feedback loops, postmaster tools (Google Postmaster, Microsoft SNDS), and blacklist monitoring.
- Diagnose and resolve inbox placement issues, soft/hard bounce patterns, and reputation dips.
- Manage complaint rates and bounce rates against ISP thresholds, adjusting send pace based on real data.
Campaign infrastructure
- Recommend and stand up the appropriate sending stack (ESP, self-hosted MTA, or hybrid) for our volume and goals.
- Set up sending domains/subdomains so that different sending streams (re-engagement, ongoing newsletters, and any separate outreach) are properly isolated and don't put our primary domain at risk.
- Build a multi-step re-engagement sequence and manage its rollout from most-engaged to colder segments.
Compliance
- Review consent status across the list with specific attention to Canadian anti-spam law (CASL), as well as GDPR and CAN-SPAM where applicable.
- Advise on the correct approach when opt-in or consent-expiry records are incomplete (e.g., gradual permission-based re-engagement rather than a full-list send).
- Ensure every send meets legal requirements: sender identification, valid physical/contact info, and working unsubscribe handling.
Handover & documentation
- Document the sending setup, warmup history, segmentation logic, and ongoing sending guidelines.
- Leave our internal team able to run day-to-day sending confidently, with clear guardrails.
What we expect you to know cold
- The mechanics of inbox placement: why mail lands in inbox vs. spam vs. blocked, and how mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft) actually evaluate senders.
- How sender reputation is built, damaged, and repaired — at both the IP and domain level.
- Authentication end to end: SPF, DKIM, DMARC (alignment, policies, reporting), and DNS configuration.
- IP and domain warmup strategy for large and aged lists.
- List verification and hygiene workflows, and how to interpret verification results.
- Bounce, complaint, and engagement metrics — what's normal, what's a warning sign, and what to do about it.
- ESP setup and management (at least one of SES, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, etc.).
- Self-hosted/dedicated MTA setup and maintenance (Postfix, PowerMTA, or equivalent), including the operational realities of running and monitoring it.
- Email anti-spam law: CASL, GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and the practical compliance differences between them.
Required experience
- Demonstrated experience reactivating large, aged, dormant lists specifically — not only ongoing eCommerce campaign management. Please share examples and the outcomes (deliverability and engagement).
- Hands-on experience with both ESP-based sending and self-hosted/dedicated MTA infrastructure, with a clear point of view on when each is appropriate.
- A track record of keeping bounce and spam-complaint rates low and inbox placement high.
- Working knowledge of CASL/GDPR/CAN-SPAM compliance.
Nice to have
- Experience in gaming, esports, or consumer-tech audiences.
- Experience managing multiple sending domains/brands under one operation.
- Familiarity with email design that renders reliably across clients (table-based HTML, inline styles).
How we work / what we value
- Reputation and compliance come before speed. We'd rather do this correctly over several weeks than fast and recklessly. Send pace follows the data.
- Honest tradeoff advice. If self-hosting is wrong for our case, tell us why. If an ESP is wrong, tell us that too. We want judgment, not a sales pitch for one tool.
- Ethical, legitimate sending only. We protect our domain and our users. We're not interested in blacklist-evasion tactics, and licensed/legitimate software is a requirement — no pirated or "cracked" tools.
- Clean separation of sending streams. Re-engagement, ongoing newsletters, and any separate outreach stay on properly isolated infrastructure.
To apply
Please include:
- A similar large dormant-list reactivation you've run, with the deliverability and engagement results.
- Your experience with both ESP and self-hosted MTA setups, and how you decide which to use.
- How you approach list cleansing and warmup at a high level.
- How you handle incomplete consent/opt-in records.
- Your availability, your rate, and a rough estimate of total duration and any pass-through costs (verification tools, ESP/infrastructure fees).
Success looks like
- A cleaned, segmented, compliant list with a clearly defined re-engaged segment retained for future campaigns.
- Deliverability maintained throughout (low bounce rate; spam complaints kept well under threshold).
- Sending infrastructure our internal team can operate confidently, with documentation and guidelines.
- Our primary domain reputation protected at every step.
Pay: $35.00-$85.00 per hour
Work Location: In person
