Senior Copywriter, Germany
The one who hears it when it’s wrong.
Not factually wrong. Tonally wrong. The kind of wrong that only someone who thinks in German, dreams in German, and has read enough to know what’s alive and what’s dead on the page would catch. The word that’s technically correct but culturally empty. The sentence that was clearly written in English first. The headline that sounds like a translation because it is one.
You can’t explain the difference to someone who doesn’t hear it. You just fix it. Every time.
Healf is Europe’s fastest-growing company. Number one on the FT1000, number one on the Sifted 100.
From £1m to over £100m in under three years, with a small, talent-dense team and an electric culture with day one founder intensity.
Now we’re aiming for £1bn in the next three.
We curate the world’s best wellbeing brands across The Four Pillars™: EAT, MOVE, MIND, SLEEP. That’s the first chapter.
The next chapter is harder and more interesting.
We are moving from one market to many, from e-commerce to a technology platform, and from curating wellbeing to defining it. We are a health company, so we think we should act like one.
At its fullest expression, Healf redefines what wellbeing means for tens of millions of people.
Why this role is Healf
Healf is launching in Germany. The product catalogue is ready. The commercial strategy exists. The operations are being built. But in German, the brand is silent.
That matters more here than it would in most markets. German consumers are more sceptical than British ones. More evidence-driven. More likely to read the small print on a supplement label than the headline above it. They don’t want to be inspired. They want to be convinced.
Machine translation can give Healf correct German. Only a person with the right ear can give Healf a German voice. The distance between those two things is the entire difference between a brand that functions in Germany and one that belongs there.
You would close that distance. Not by adapting English copy into German, but by thinking in German from the start and writing from the brand’s core outward. Website, packaging, leaflets, product descriptions, campaigns, tone of voice guidelines. Everything a customer reads, holds, or scans on a shelf.
This is the most critical hire for the Germany launch because every other investment, the marketing spend, the expert partnerships, the retail presence, lands through language. If the words are wrong, none of it works.
What you will own
→ The German voice of Healf. Not a style guide adapted from English. A voice built from scratch in German that carries the same energy, precision, and authority as the UK brand but speaks to a German sensibility. You will define how Healf sounds when it talks to German customers and make sure every word across every touchpoint is unmistakably that voice.
→ Everything the customer reads. Website copy, product descriptions, packaging text, leaflets, email campaigns, social media, digital ads, and any printed material that carries the Healf name in German. You own the words. All of them.
→ The bridge between London and Germany. You report to the Brand lead in London and work within the global brand strategy. But you are the person who knows when something won’t land in German and why. You flag it, you rewrite it, you protect the brand from well-intentioned English thinking that doesn’t cross the border.
→ Tone of voice architecture for the German market. A living document that guides every person who writes for Healf in German, from freelancers to agencies to internal teams. Clear enough to be useful. Sharp enough to maintain the standard you set.
What you will have built in a year
→ A German brand voice that feels natural and authentic. Customers read Healf copy and assume the brand started in Germany.
→ Website, packaging, and product copy across the full German catalogue, written to a standard that earns trust in a sceptical market.
→ Tone of voice guidelines that any writer can follow and that protect the brand as the team scales.
→ A working rhythm with the London brand team where your cultural judgement is trusted and sought before decisions are made.
→ The foundation of a German editorial capability that grows as Healf expands across Europe.
How fast? The first product descriptions and website copy need to be live before the market launches. You will be writing from week one.
Why you’re Healf
German is your first language and your best instrument. You think in German. You write in German. You read widely enough, journalism, literature, the best brand copy in the market, that you know instinctively when a sentence is working and when it’s pretending to. Your English is strong enough to work closely with a London-based team, but your German is where the craft lives.
You are obsessed with the right word. Not approximately right. Right. You hear the difference between two near-synonyms and you know why one lands and the other slides past. You have opinions about sentence rhythm, about register, about whether a wellness brand should use du or Sie. And you can defend those opinions with more than instinct.
You understand how German consumers read. They are slower to trust, quicker to notice when something feels imported, and more willing to engage with substance than with style. You know how to write copy that earns respect in this market. Not by being cautious. By being precise.
Your words have lived on products. Packaging, product pages, website, campaigns. You know what it means to write within a brand system where every word carries weight and every surface is visible. You might come from an agency, a brand, a publishing background, or somewhere else entirely. What matters is that you have written copy that real people read on a page, a screen, or a label, and it changed what they did next.
You care about wellbeing. Not as a market category. As something real in your life. You know the German wellness landscape: the brands people trust, the scepticism toward lifestyle marketing, the gap between what’s sold and what’s proven. The idea of giving Healf a voice in this market is something you want to get right.
You work at pace and you don’t need hand-holding. Healf moves fast and the Germany launch is already underway. You write well under pressure because you’ve done the thinking before the deadline arrives. You are comfortable making judgement calls on tone and phrasing without waiting for three rounds of review.
Signals we’re looking for
→ German brand copy you have written that you’re proud of. Show us the work, not just the CV.
→ A moment where you caught something in a translation or adaptation that nobody else spotted, and fixing it changed how the brand felt in market.
→ Evidence you can write across formats: long-form editorial and six-word packaging lines, digital campaigns and printed leaflets. Range matters here.
→ An opinion about how wellness and health should sound in German. What do most brands get wrong?
→ Something that tells us language is an obsession, not just a professional skill. What you read, how you think about words, why precision matters to you.
The deal
Competitive base plus meaningful equity for the right person.
We ask a great deal of the people who work here. We expect full ownership and a genuine commitment to give this chapter everything you have.
In return, we will give you the same: everything we have, invested in your growth, your wellbeing, and the defining skills of the next decade.
We have built the fastest-growing company in Europe with a team small enough that every person in it shapes the outcome. That is still true today.
The next person we hire will change the trajectory of the company.
If the most important work of your career is ahead of you, this is the place to do it.
One question
Include your answer in your CV or cover letter attachment when you apply.
Healf sells a magnesium sleep supplement. The UK product page opens with: “Better sleep starts with better science.” Write the German product page opening (two to three sentences) that would earn trust with a German customer. Then tell us in 100 words what you changed and why.
The product copy can be in German. The explanation in English. Show us how you think.