Marketing has picked up a run of engineer titles: GTM engineer, growth engineer, content engineer, AI automation engineer, marketing engineer. They overlap, and there is little hard data on who takes them.
Live Data Technologies looked at people worldwide whose previous job was in marketing and who then started a role with engineer in the title, in the 12 months to each August from 2021 to 2026. The newest year is still being recorded, so it will rise.
A GTM (go-to-market) engineer builds the systems a sales and marketing team runs on, such as lead lists, data enrichment, outreach automation and AI agents. In Live Data Technologies data it is now the most common engineer title for marketers changing roles.
It belongs to a family of overlapping engineer titles in marketing: growth engineer, content engineer, AI automation engineer, marketing operations engineer, revenue engineer and marketing engineer. Most are not software engineering jobs. They are marketing and go-to-market roles that build systems, often with AI. This page counts all of them.
In the 12 months to August 2026, 312 of at least 535 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role became GTM engineers.
Clay, the data company most associated with the title, was the largest single employer of new GTM engineers from January 2025 to September 2026, with 101 of 2,451 people.
The number of people starting jobs as GTM engineers rose from 92 in 2022 to 1,273 in 2025, according to Live Data Technologies, and 2026 had already passed that by October (1,572, still being recorded).
Most of these were people joining a new employer: 1,012 of the 1,273 in 2025. The rest took the title at a company where they already worked.
These are people starting the job, from any background and worldwide, not job postings. Counts of open postings measure demand; this measures who actually took the title.
| Year | Started as GTM engineers | Of whom joined a new employer |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 46 | 38 |
| 2022 | 92 | 67 |
| 2023 | 176 | 149 |
| 2024 | 434 | 354 |
| 2025 | 1,273 | 1,012 |
| 2026, to October 20, still being recorded | 1,572 | 1,211 |
The number of people moving from a marketing job into a role with engineer in the title more than doubled in two years, according to Live Data Technologies: at least 535 in the 12 months to August 2026, against 201 two years earlier.
It is still a small group. A few hundred people a year make this move in our data, against hundreds of thousands of marketing hires.
Each year here runs from September to August, so 2026 means September 2025 to August 2026. That year is still being recorded: job changes take months to show up in public information, so the figure will rise. Earlier years read slightly low, because we count people whose career histories are current today.
Source: Live Data Technologies data.
| 12 months to August | Marketers moving into an engineer title | Became GTM engineers | GTM engineers, in 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 82 | 7 | 9 |
| 2022 | 123 | 19 | 15 |
| 2023 | 116 | 29 | 25 |
| 2024 | 201 | 66 | 33 |
| 2025 | 339 | 184 | 54 |
| 2026, still being recorded | 535 | 312 | 58 |
Nearly 6 in 10 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 became GTM engineers, according to Live Data Technologies, up from under 1 in 10 in 2021 (312 of 535, against 7 of 82).
Content engineer was second in 2026 with 80, then growth engineer with 67. In a hand check of 30 records, about 3 in 10 content engineer jobs were writing training content for AI models rather than marketing, so that row overstates marketing work.
In 2021 content and growth engineer were the most common of these titles, and GTM engineer was among the smallest.
| Title taken | 2021 | 2024 | 2026, still being recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| GTM engineer | 7 | 66 | 312 |
| Content engineer | 30 | 70 | 80 |
| Growth engineer | 20 | 39 | 67 |
| AI automation engineer | 1 | 14 | 34 |
| Marketing engineer (tech and marketing companies) | 11 | 5 | 18 |
| Marketing operations or automation engineer | 11 | 7 | 16 |
| Revenue engineer | 2 | 0 | 8 |
| All engineer titles | 82 | 201 | 535 |
It is, but few marketers take the literal title: 18 of the 535 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 became marketing engineers at tech or marketing companies, according to Live Data Technologies.
The title has two meanings. Most people who hold it work at equipment, chip and industrial companies, where it is an older sales-side engineering job. At software, AI, internet and marketing companies it is a newer role, and there it has grown: our page on marketing engineers at tech firms has the count of people holding it.
This page counts only people whose previous job was in marketing, so its figures are smaller than counts of everyone who starts the title.
Marketing engineers at tech firms, 2020 to 2026
Of 1,327 people who started as GTM engineers from September 2024 to August 2026, 21 in 100 came from operations jobs, 17 from sales, 14 from engineering or data, 13 were founders or freelancers and 12 came from marketing, according to Live Data Technologies.
Operations, sales and marketing together make up about half (50.2 in 100). Operations here means operations and systems roles, such as revenue or marketing operations, the people who usually run a company's CRM and automation tools.
This section covers every new GTM engineer, not only those who came from marketing. 302 of the 1,327 took the title at the company where they already worked.
| Previous job | In 100 new GTM engineers | People |
|---|---|---|
| Ops and systems | 20.9 | 277 |
| Sales and sales development | 17.0 | 225 |
| Engineering and data | 14.3 | 190 |
| Founder or freelance | 13.3 | 177 |
| Other | 13.3 | 177 |
| Marketing and growth | 12.3 | 163 |
| General GTM role | 3.8 | 51 |
| Advisor, program or project | 2.8 | 37 |
| Student or intern | 1.2 | 16 |
| Product | 1.1 | 14 |
Not always: more than 1 in 4 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 did it without changing employer, according to Live Data Technologies (147 of 535).
The share has stayed between 22 and 37 in 100 in every year since 2021. Some of these are new jobs inside the same company, and some are the same job under a new title. The data cannot tell the two apart.
Mostly small ones: where company size is known, about 7 in 10 marketers who became GTM engineers in the year to August 2026 joined companies of 200 people or fewer, according to Live Data Technologies (150 of 218).
No single company drives the trend. Clay was the largest named employer of these 312 moves with 7, and taking out Clay and its partner agencies changes the GTM engineer share by about one point.
Across all 2,451 new GTM engineers from January 2025 to September 2026, Clay hired the most, followed by freelancers and Clay partner agencies such as The Kiln. Among larger software companies, ZoomInfo, OpenAI, Apollo.io and HubSpot each took on between 9 and 13. By country, the US had the most (1,094), then India (204) and the UK (137).
| Employer | New GTM engineers, Jan 2025 to Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Clay | 101 |
| Freelance/Self-employed | 54 |
| The Kiln | 18 |
| ZoomInfo | 13 |
| OpenAI | 12 |
| Apollo.io | 10 |
| Instantly.ai | 10 |
| HubSpot | 9 |
| Inboxkit | 9 |
| AirOps | 8 |
| Starbridge | 8 |
| Snowflake | 7 |
The pattern holds in the US alone: GTM engineer was 137 of 235 moves from marketing into engineer-style titles in 2026 (58 in 100), counted on a slightly wider title list.
In 2021 the most common move on that wider list was to marketing technologist, a title without engineer in it (72 of 154). By 2026 it was 23 of 558.
A GTM (go-to-market) engineer builds the systems a sales and marketing team runs on, such as lead lists, data enrichment, outreach automation and AI agents. In Live Data Technologies data it is now the most common engineer title for marketers changing roles.
The number of people starting jobs as GTM engineers rose from 92 in 2022 to 1,273 in 2025, according to Live Data Technologies, and 2026 had already passed that by October (1,572, still being recorded).
The number of people moving from a marketing job into a role with engineer in the title more than doubled in two years, according to Live Data Technologies: at least 535 in the 12 months to August 2026, against 201 two years earlier.
Nearly 6 in 10 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 became GTM engineers, according to Live Data Technologies, up from under 1 in 10 in 2021 (312 of 535, against 7 of 82).
It is, but few marketers take the literal title: 18 of the 535 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 became marketing engineers at tech or marketing companies, according to Live Data Technologies.
Of 1,327 people who started as GTM engineers from September 2024 to August 2026, 21 in 100 came from operations jobs, 17 from sales, 14 from engineering or data, 13 were founders or freelancers and 12 came from marketing, according to Live Data Technologies.
Not always: more than 1 in 4 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 did it without changing employer, according to Live Data Technologies (147 of 535).
Mostly small ones: where company size is known, about 7 in 10 marketers who became GTM engineers in the year to August 2026 joined companies of 200 people or fewer, according to Live Data Technologies (150 of 218).
Live Data Technologies compiles career histories for 124 million people from public information on the open web. This page uses the full career histories of people worldwide who started a job with an engineer title used in marketing and go-to-market work (GTM, growth, content, AI automation, marketing operations, revenue or marketing engineer), as recorded on October 20, 2026. Came from marketing means the previous job had a marketing title (such as marketing, growth, content, demand, brand, SEO, lifecycle or communications) or sat in the marketing function, leaving out product managers, engineers and HR. Moves within the same company are included. Marketing engineer is counted only at tech and marketing companies, because at equipment makers it is an older sales-side job. Each year runs to August. The newest months are still filling in, because a job change can take months to show up, so 2026 will rise, and earlier years read slightly low because we count people whose career histories are current today. The rules were hand-checked on 30 records. The data does not show pay or what the job involves day to day. It covers people with a findable professional presence online and is not a census of all workers.
You can quote these figures. Credit "Source: Live Data Technologies data" and link to this page. You can republish the chart with the same credit.
The finding: Nearly 6 in 10 marketers who moved into an engineer-titled role in the year to August 2026 became GTM engineers, according to Live Data Technologies, up from under 1 in 10 in 2021 (312 of 535, against 7 of 82). https://www.livedatatech.com/insights/gtm-engineers
Plain text: Live Data Technologies, "Nearly 6 in 10 marketers who take engineer roles become GTM engineers," October 28, 2026. https://www.livedatatech.com/insights/gtm-engineers
Academic (APA): Hamilton, A. (2026, October 28). Nearly 6 in 10 marketers who take engineer roles become GTM engineers. Live Data Technologies. https://www.livedatatech.com/insights/gtm-engineers