The Future of GTM Engineering Isn't Just Technical [2025 Report]
The 50/50 rule, the strategic shift AI is accelerating, and why the best GTM Engineers understand business problems better than they understand Clay
Everyone’s scrambling to hire GTM Engineers. The job postings multiply daily. The demand accelerates. But most companies have absolutely no idea what they’re hiring for.
Is it RevOps with better tools? Sales automation on steroids? Marketing ops that finally learned to code? The answer splits the industry three ways - and that confusion reveals something fascinating about where go-to-market strategy is heading.
Maria Kastani’s GTM Engineering thesis sparked crucial conversations about this emerging field - and I saw an opportunity to bring more voices into the room. Not just women, but thought leaders from different corners of GTM: in-house GTM leaders, founders, agency owners, GTM engineers, freelance specialists, & GTM strategists. I asked them the same questions. Building on the same foundation. Adding depth, nuance, and perspectives that reshape how we think about this field.
Think of this piece as a field note from inside the movement, a companion to Maria’s thesis, featuring voices that may not dominate LinkedIn feeds but minds that are deep in the trenches of GTM, and shaping the evolution of GTM Engineering as we speak.
My observations (Stephanie Holland) are woven throughout, because I’m not just reporting, I’m engineering 🛠️
Just quickly, massive thanks to the brilliant GTM minds who contributed:
Diana Gonzalez, GTM Product Manager at RevPartners. Javeria Shah, founder at DFY Automation. Marina Ghilchik, founding GTM Engineer at mgsh.agency. Loriauna Mora, GTM Engineer. Ilayda Aydemir, GTM Engineer & founder of TargetCode.io. Darcy Gleeson, co-founder of OutboundBuddy. Constance Gatbois, founder of Marketing Skills. Esther Ritter, Sr. Technical Programs Manager at Go Nimbly. Giselle Miller, Revenue Technology Manager at Pandadoc. Samantha Novak-Federmeyer, Head of GTM at Supersend. Brigitta Ruha, founder of Growth Today. Noemie Jacquemin, founder of Rec Growth. Sara McNamara, Founding Revenue Operations Lead at Vector. Johanna Topalian, owner of Sales Mint. Nayab Osaf, GTM Engineer. Marielle Camba, GTM Engineer. And me, Stephanie Holland, GTM specialist and founding GTM Engineer at mgsh.agency
Let’s get started.
🔥The Bottom Line🔥
Go-to-Market Engineering isn’t just RevOps with a glow-up. It’s a distinct hybrid discipline where technical execution meets strategic business impact. RevOps keeps the trains running. GTM Engineers build new railroads.
The 50/50 rule defines success: equal parts strategic and technical capability. Technical prowess with Clay and automation platforms? Table stakes. What separates brilliant from competent: pattern recognition, commercial instinct, and the ability to translate messy business problems into engineered solutions that move revenue. The role demands relentless experimentation - testing, iterating, operationalising what works whilst killing what doesn’t, fast.
Traditional outbound isn’t dead, but the spray-and-pray version cluttering your inbox has been obsolete for years. Today’s GTM execution requires signal-based targeting, brand-led communication, and relevance over volume. The plays that convert succeed through timing and intelligence, not brute force.
As AI democratises technical execution, what becomes valuable are the human skills that can’t be automated: strategic judgment, empathy-driven understanding of decision-making, creativity in experiment design. AI will handle the buttons. Humans will design & own the blueprint. The winners will be those who never confuse the difference.
The opportunity is massive. Demand outpaces supply. The field needs more women. And the future belongs to those who understand both strategy and systems.
The Questions:
What are the essential skills of a successful GTM Engineer today?
Where does the GTM Engineer belong in your org chart?
Is GTM Engineering new or just RevOps rebranded?
Is traditional outbound dead?
What’s the future of GTM Engineering?
What tools and plays are actually working?
How should GTM Engineers be compensated?
👉 1. What Are the Essential Skills of a Successful GTM Engineer Today?
The technical skills get all the airtime - Clay mastery, API fluency, automation wizardry. But across 17 GTM professionals, a different picture emerges: the best GTM Engineers aren’t just builders. They’re strategic operators who understand how execution ladders to revenue.
The 50/50 Rule
“They’ve got this perfect 50-50 balance between being strategic and technical,” observes Loriauna Mora, GTM Engineer. “You’ve got these brilliant strategic thinkers who could consult circles around anyone, but ask them to actually build something? Good luck. Then on the flip side, you’ve got these insanely talented engineers who can automate anything you throw at them, but they have no clue why they’re building what they’re building.”
This isn’t about technical prowess alone. It’s about understanding the full context of business growth goals, the challenges across brand, marketing, and sales, and how every workflow feeds into solving real business problems. Marina Ghilchik, founding GTM Engineer at mgsh.agency, captures it perfectly: “the best GTM Engineers think like architects, build like operators, and communicate like translators.”
Strategy Over Shiny Objects
The emphasis on strategy cuts through the tool hype. “Clay tables that aren’t used, or aren’t in the CRM or aren’t driven by strategy don’t do much,” notes Diana Gonzalez, GTM Product Manager at Rev Partners. The focus isn’t on building impressive workflows - it’s on codifying what’s working and operationalising it for repeatable success.
Ilayda Aydemir, founder of TargetCode.io, emphasises this revenue connection: “I stay clear on purpose, stay organised, and pay close attention to details. I enjoy building systems, keep curious, try new ideas, and always tie the motion back to real revenue.”
The Experimentation Imperative
Technical skills matter, but they’re table stakes. What separates effective GTM Engineers is an experimentation mindset. As Brigitta Ruha, founder of Growth Today, puts it: “constant testing, iterating, and learning, in GTM, one thing is true: things change, so you should never stay the same either.”
This requires relentless learning. “They’re obsessed with staying on top of what’s new,” Loriauna Mora adds. “Because if they’re not, their competitors are going to eat their lunch.”
The Hybrid Skillset
Darcy Gleeson, co-founder of OutboundBuddy, breaks down the core disciplines: “Data architect thinking, engineering problem solving, and commercially informed product mindset.” But she adds a critical caveat: “Because the tooling landscape changes so quickly, a continuous learning mentality is also critical.”
Constance Gatbois, founder of Marketing Skills, frames the convergence precisely: “GTM engineering is about combining technology, data, marketing, and sales into one role. It’s the ability to bridge technical expertise with commercial impact.”
The pattern is clear: successful GTM Engineers combine technical capability with strategic thinking, commercial instinct with experimentation grit, and systems architecture with stakeholder communication. They don’t just build workflows - they engineer solutions that directly impact pipeline, understand where results come from, and create repeatable formulas for hitting growth targets.
The real question isn’t whether you can use Clay. It’s whether you understand why you’re building what you’re building, and how it connects to the revenue goals that actually matter.
👉 2. Where Does the GTM Engineer Belong in Your Org Chart?
The org chart debate rages: RevOps? Sales? Marketing? Its own team? But fixating on reporting lines misses what actually makes GTM Engineering effective. The real question isn’t where it sits - it’s how it connects.
The Standalone Team Argument
Several leaders advocate for GTM Engineering as its own platform function. “I would make GTM Engineering its own platform team that serves Sales, Marketing, and RevOps,” says Javeria Shah, founder at DFY Automation. “One lead who understands the whole revenue engine owns the standards and roadmap, and a few GTM engineers embed with each function so work moves fast without creating tech debt.”
Loriauna Mora frames it simply: “GTM engineering touches every single aspect of how you generate revenue. That’s why I think it should either be its own department or at least live under the RevOps umbrella, because it’s going to have its fingers in everything anyway.”
The RevOps Integration Case
Others argue GTM Engineering is RevOps evolved. “Strongly believe GTME fits squarely within RevOps,” states Diana Gonzalez. “We’re moving away from silos of sales ops vs. marketing ops vs CS ops and moving into true orchestration of GTM with a centralised tech stack and operator.”
Esther Ritter, Sr. Technical Programs Manager at Go Nimbly, sees it as a natural extension of RevOps: “… but with RevOps acting as the product owner.” (We chat about RevOps in more detail in a minute.)
The Bridge Function Reality
The most compelling perspective cuts through the org chart entirely. “A GTM Engineer should not sit only in Sales, Marketing, or RevOps — the role works best as a bridge,” observes Ilayda Aydemir. “The point is to connect signals, data, and systems so every team moves in the same direction.”
Darcy Gleeson articulates why the debate itself is flawed: “it makes more sense to think less in terms of organisational charts and more in terms of how the role actually collaborates.” She suggests viewing GTM Engineers like internal product managers - balancing inputs from multiple stakeholders, filtering for prioritisation, driving continuous improvement.
Marina Ghilchik gets even more specific: “A GTM Engineer belongs in the middle of Sales and RevOps. The org chart is less important than the alignment - if everyone is incentivised by the same metrics, like booked-to-closed-won conversion, then GTM Engineers can do what they do best: turn messy processes into revenue leverage.”
The Stage Factor
Marielle Camba, GTM Engineer, highlights why placement debates miss a critical variable: company stage. “There are levels to GTM Engineering. Startup GTME - no formal RevOps, no real CRM - you can move fast with a strong agency or technical operator. It’s messy, but easier to build GTM from scratch. Mid-Market and Enterprise GTME - everything is interconnected. A single motion touches Sales, Marketing, RevOps. One mistake can stall entire quarters of revenue. This is where GTM Engineering goes from helpful to absolutely necessary.”
Beyond Org Charts: GTM Engineering as Capability
From a strategic perspective, the org chart question may become moot. GTM Engineering isn’t just a role - it’s evolving into a capability that permeates every revenue function. The real competitive advantage comes when strategic thinking about automation, efficiency, and innovation becomes embedded across sales, marketing, and operations roles.
The question isn’t where GTM Engineers sit. It’s whether your organisation can integrate GTM thinking into how every team approaches growth challenges.
👉 3. Is GTM Engineering New or Just RevOps Rebranded?
The debate splits into three camps: evolution, revolution, or something in between. But the answer reveals less about terminology and more about how fundamentally GTM work is changing.
The Evolution Argument
Several leaders frame GTM Engineering as RevOps for the AI era. “It’s an evolution - GTME is RevOps in the age of AI,” says Diana Gonzalez. Giselle Miller, Revenue Technology Manager at Pandadoc, offers a sharp analogy: “GTM Engineering is the next evolution of RevOps like Uber is the next evolution of taxis. Both take you from point A to point B but 1 of them is way more efficient.”
Javeria Shah captures what’s actually changed: “We’ve been doing enrichment and GTM ops for years, it was just slow and manual. With tools like Clay and modern AI tooling, moving data and building automations is finally fast, reliable, and repeatable. That shift changes the job: you’re engineering GTM systems, not just maintaining processes.”
The Distinct Field Case
Others draw sharper lines. Marina Ghilchik puts it bluntly: “GTM Engineering isn’t RevOps with a glow-up, it’s entirely a net new creature. RevOps keeps the trains running. GTM Engineers build new railroads. Different instincts, different skill set, different impact.”
The technical demands separate the two. “GTM engineering is way more AI-focused and technical,” observes Loriauna Mora. “RevOps folks? They can probably get away with being like 80% strategic, 20% technical. But GTM engineers? It’s got to be 50-50.”
Ilayda Aydemir distinguishes the functions: “RevOps is about keeping data, tools, and reporting in order, while GTM Engineering builds the engine itself by designing workflows, automations, and logic that connect signals to revenue.”
Samantha Novak-Federmeyer, Head of GTM at SuperSend, frames it as purpose-driven: “RevOps was built for administration and governance. GTM Engineering is built for invention and acceleration - design signal-based loops, wire up APIs/agents/automations, run weekly experiments, and prove pipeline.”
The Both Perspective
Darcy Gleeson refuses the binary: “I don’t think it’s as simple as choosing between ‘new field’ or ‘just RevOps rebranded’. It’s the natural evolution of RevOps and the sales industry’s answer to what marketing has had for years in analytical growth and performance experimentation roles.”
What Really Matters
The debate misses the strategic shift. Whether you call it RevOps evolved or GTM Engineering new, what’s changed is the speed, technical capability, and experimental mindset now required to compete. The tools democratised what was previously manual and slow. The role emerged to capitalise on that acceleration.
The question isn’t whether it’s new. It’s whether your organisation has adapted to the new pace of GTM execution.
👉 4. Is Traditional Outbound Dead?
The short answer: No. The qualified answer: The version landing in your inbox right now? Most definitely.
What’s Obsolete
Cold outbound as practiced by 98% of companies - devoid of brand experience, divorced from strategy, lacking any semblance of relevance - is dead. “True cold outbound has become obsolete and we must move into signal-based outbounding,” declares Diana Gonzalez. “Leveraging signals, intent and fit criteria to get to the right person, at the right time, with the right message.”
Javeria Shah draws the line precisely: “Predictable Revenue isn’t obsolete, the spray-and-pray version is. The fundamentals still win (tight ICP, clear offer, consistent follow-up), but modern outbound is signal-led, multi-channel, and AI-assisted.”
From Volume to Intelligence
Marina Ghilchik captures the transformation: “Outbound isn’t dead, but ‘Predictable Revenue’ outbound is. The future isn’t 1,000 dials a day, it’s one perfectly-timed message that lands because AI and automation told you exactly when and why to send it. Outbound doesn’t scale through brute force anymore. It scales through intelligence.”
But intelligence means more than automation. Technology should provide depth of understanding - the audience’s existential business problems, their urgency, their context. This enables intelligent ICP eligibility decisions, smarter lead scoring, and strategic segmentation across immediate priorities, future opportunities, and watch lists.
“We can’t just ‘Clay and Pray’ anymore, we need to be a lot more strategic,” observes Loriauna Mora, sharing how her team targeted customers of a competitor during service outages rather than broad ICP blasting.
Brand-Led Outbound Changes the Game
Here’s what gets missed: outbound works exponentially better with brand awareness, recognition, and trust already established. Outbound can’t operate in isolation - it must leverage the full GTM motion. The companies winning at outbound understand this isn’t just about better targeting. It’s about brand-led execution where every touchpoint reinforces strategic positioning.
The Human Element Amplified
“AI and automation heighten the importance of the human element,” notes Darcy Gleeson. “Relationship building is still at the core. The difference now is that reps are armed with richer data, intent signals and automation to help them prioritise where to spend their time.”
Nayab Osaf, GTM Engineer, cuts to the truth: “The future of outbound is more personalised, more targeted, and more niche, powered by AI, but trained to sound human. Because at the end of the day, people still crave that human touch.”
Test, Learn, Optimise
The path forward requires constant experimentation. Finding message-market fit, to borrow the term from The Deal Lab’s Kellen Casebeer, that ladders to business goals means A/B testing everything, killing what doesn’t work quickly, and operationalising what does. Immediately.
Samantha Novak-Federmeyer reframes repeatability: “The ‘predictable’ now comes from signal design, deliverability discipline, and tight learning loops, not raw volume.”
Traditional outbound isn’t dead. But the lazy, brand-divorced, spray-and-pray version filling inboxes today has been obsolete for years. The market just hasn’t caught up yet.
👉 5. What’s the Future of GTM Engineering?
AI will handle more execution. Much more. The technical barriers keep dropping. So what becomes valuable?
The Human Skills That Can’t Be Automated
Marina Ghilchik cuts to the core: “What becomes non-negotiable are the human skills: pattern recognition, commercial instinct, and the ability to translate messy business problems into structured systems. You cannot automate curiosity. You cannot automate judgment. And you certainly cannot automate the instinct to call BS on a play that looks good in a dashboard but fails in the field.”
The consensus is striking: as AI capabilities accelerate, strategic thinking becomes the differentiator. “Human strategy is the difference between a builder and an architect,” observes Johanna Topalian, owner of Sales Mint.
Sara McNamara, Founding Revenue Operations Lead at Vector, sees what needs to happen clearly: “My hope is that the role will become less technically focused and more strategy focused. It’s impossible to automate or outsource kindness, trust, and human connection. Being able to work well with people, gain trust, and build relationships will always be critical.”
Who Holds the Wand
AI is powerful, but only when wielded with intention. The tool doesn’t determine the outcome - the human directing it does. Understanding which problems to solve matters more than solving problems faster. Being efficient at the wrong things just scales failure.
Noemie Jacquemin, founder of Rec Growth, frames the future precisely: “We’re entering the era of fully automated ‘factories’ - only this time, they’re producing pipeline, revenue, and growth. AI will run the factory but humans will still design the blueprint, tell the story, and build the trust.”
This requires staying in the driver’s seat. Using AI to amplify human creativity, ingenuity, and imagination - not replace it. The risk isn’t AI capability. It’s over-reliance that leads to execution divorced from strategy, automation devoid of empathy, and efficiency without understanding.
What Actually Creates Competitive Advantage
The best business strategies emerge from profound understanding of what drives human decision-making. Deep knowledge of your ICP, the decision-making hierarchy, the hearts and minds of your audience. This demands empathy, compassion, and curiosity about why people actually buy.
Samantha Novak-Federmeyer identifies what remains uniquely human: “signal design & judgment (which triggers really predict meetings for this ICP), narrative/offer craft (turning proof into a one-liner people feel), experiment design (clean hypotheses, fast reads), cross-functional leadership, and taste & ethics (brand-safe, non-creepy). Add empathy and creativity on top; knowing the customer, solving specific problems with specificity, and that’s the edge.”
Darcy Gleeson sees where value concentrates: “AI will take over more of the building, but it cannot replace judgement, empathy or commercial instinct. That is where the GTM Engineer of the future will stand out.”
The Strategic Imperative
The future isn’t about technical mastery - AI will democratise that. It’s about strategic clarity: identifying the right problems, understanding the human context, designing solutions that create genuine value, and building trust through authentic relationships.
AI will handle the buttons. Humans own the blueprint. Winning requires no forgetting which is which.
👉 6. What Tools and Plays Are Actually Working?
The tool landscape explodes daily. New platforms, new integrations, new promises. But cut through the noise and a clear hierarchy emerges.
The Core Stack
Clay dominates. Giselle Miller calls it “truly a game changer when architecting solutions to problems that would’ve otherwise been more complicated to solve. It connects and enriches end to end systems in ways that haven’t been possible without multiple APIs.”
For orchestration beyond Clay: n8n handles advanced automation. Email sequencing splits between Instantly and SmartLead. LinkedIn automation runs through HeyReach or La Growth Machine. CRMs anchor everything - HubSpot or Salesforce as the source of truth.
But here’s the critical insight from Noemie Jacquemin: “Easy to fall into shiny tool syndrome. Find what works for your play, and stick to it. Make sure you keep it simple.”
The Plays That Convert
Signal-based outbound crushes volume plays. “Leveraging signals, intent and fit criteria to get to the right person, at the right time,” as Diana Gonzalez frames it.
Loriauna Mora shares what’s working: “The most successful campaign I’ve been running is this PLG-focused automation built out in Clay. You take existing trial data, de-anonymise users, figure out if they’re working for a business that fits your ICP, then pass it to sales with automated emails and LinkedIn follow-ups. Combine that with user interaction data and you can be even more successful.”
The numbers tell the story: LinkedIn automation hits 25-40% response rates versus 2-8% for cold email.
Samantha Novak-Federmeyer details what’s converting: “Comment-first LinkedIn → DM → email. Job-change & hiring-signal triggers. Competitor-follower plays. Always-on workflows that keep segments fresh and fire sends automatically as signals change.”
The Unglamorous Work That Actually Matters
Marina Ghilchik cuts to what creates real leverage: “The most impactful plays right now are rarely the sexy ones. Automating lead enrichment before outreach. Making sure the CRM reflects reality. Killing off the 15 minutes of manual prep that gets repeated 200 times a day. The real wins come from eliminating drag so revenue teams can actually do their jobs.”
This is the strategic shift: tools enable execution, but identifying which friction to eliminate, which signals actually predict conversion, and how to operationalise what works - that’s where competitive advantage lives.
Darcy Gleeson, co-founder of OutboundBuddy, emphasises what makes plays work: “continuous experimentation and a deep understanding of the niche. Generic personalisation never resonates the way thoughtful, niche-specific outreach does.”
The future isn’t about having the most tools. It’s about having the right stack, kept simple and integrated, executing plays based on genuine understanding of what drives your specific audience to act.
👉 7. How Should GTM Engineers Be Compensated?
The answers split three ways: commission-based, high base salary, or hybrid. But the most compelling thinking challenges the question itself.
Beyond the Binary
Javeria Shah reframes compensation entirely: “Pay a GTM Engineer like a builder: strong base salary, with a small impact bonus, not sales commission. Measure them on the value their systems create across the org: fresher data for Sales, fewer manual loops for RevOps, working automations for Marketing, faster time-to-ship, and clear movement in pipeline and conversion.”
This captures why traditional sales compensation doesn’t fit. Like a CMO, GTM Engineers contribute strategic value that can’t be reduced to revenue metrics alone. The creativity, innovation, analytical skills, and systems thinking that drive long-term competitive advantage resist simple measurement.
The Hybrid Consensus
Marina Ghilchik puts it simply: “A GTM Engineer should be paid like the hybrid they are. High base, because the technical skill set is rare. Bonus tied to sales performance, because their work only matters if it moves revenue.”
Most respondents landed here: strong base salary with performance bonuses. But what constitutes “performance” varies based on where the role sits and what it actually does.
The In-House vs Agency Distinction
Darcy Gleeson draws critical distinctions: “For in-house GTM Engineers, approach it like a commercial product manager - high base with OKRs tied to a bonus. It gives them psychological safety to test and learn while tying performance to measurable outcomes. For agency-side, lean base-heavy because replies and conversions are often managed by the client. If someone is managing replies and converting them into meetings, that’s essentially an SDR role and should be compensated accordingly.”
What to Measure
Samantha Novak-Federmeyer identifies what matters: “pipeline created/influenced from GTM-owned plays; meetings booked; positive reply rate; time-to-launch for new segments; deliverability SLAs; and ICP data coverage/quality. Commissioning like a salesperson misaligns incentives - pay a strong base with targeted upside for what the role truly does: build systems that make the whole team faster.”
Nayab Osaf emphasises the core reality: “Every GTM Engineer is doing something different in their organisation.” The compensation model should reflect the actual role and value delivered, not a generic template.
The Strategic Reality
Like marketing leadership, GTM Engineering creates value that extends beyond immediate revenue attribution. Brand experience, system efficiency, team enablement, innovation capacity - these matter profoundly but resist clean measurement.
The answer isn’t commission or base salary. It’s high base plus bonuses tied to outcomes the role actually controls: system performance, team efficiency, pipeline quality, and yes - revenue impact where directly attributable.
Pay for the hybrid reality, not the organisational fantasy.
🔥The Strategic Shift🔥
Across 17 voices, one pattern dominates: GTM Engineering succeeds when strategic thinking drives technical execution, not the other way around.
The technical barriers are dropping. AI democratises automation, orchestration, and workflow building. What remains scarce - and increasingly valuable - are the human skills: pattern recognition, commercial instinct, strategic judgment about which problems to solve and why. The ability to understand business context, decode human decision-making, and build systems that create genuine leverage.
This isn’t RevOps rebranded or sales automation evolved. It’s a hybrid discipline requiring equal parts strategic clarity and technical capability, commercial empathy and experimental grit, systems thinking and stakeholder translation. The role adapts based on organisational context, but the core remains: connecting business strategy to technical execution in ways that drive measurable revenue outcomes.
The opportunity is massive. Demand outpaces supply. The definitional debates will continue - and that flexibility is a feature, not a bug. GTM Engineering delivers value differently across contexts, industries, and growth stages.
What unites the field isn’t a single org chart placement or compensation model. It’s the commitment to building intelligent systems that amplify human judgment, accelerate GTM execution, and create competitive advantage through the marriage of strategy and technology.
The future is being built by those who show up, experiment, share what they learn, and stay generous with their knowledge. The opportunity is real. Go after it.
Typos are my way of checking that you’re paying attention - or proof that my brain moves faster than my fingers. (Jury’s still out.)
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