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As mentioned several times in this blog, two things fuel my passion for work: Software and Marketing. You can merge these two passions and call them megolostupidusmaranus, and I’d still be there.
My first marketing job was as a "social media manager and customer service representative". Since then, I've held roles in content marketing, SEO, digital marketing, communications management, product marketing, growth engagement, and even the nebulous field of growth marketing. My experience has made me quite detached from job titles, and my goals are instead fueled by curiosity, interests, learning gaps, and sometimes earning capacity.
Let’s take a word from today’s sponsor, Deel, and then we’ll begin our intro to GTM Engineering.
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An Introduction to GTM Engineering
When I first saw the “GTM Engineer” job title Clay popularised a few years ago, I was intrigued. If you’ve worked in any modern marketing role, a huge chunk of the work is Go-To-Market, a term describing the aggregation of activities a company uses to introduce its products to the public.
First, it was popularised by a genuinely useful new tool (Clay), and second, what a cool title. Because of my aversion to titles and work experience, I'm very familiar with job-title inventions and how operational models and industry norms can shape job titles. It has absolutely nothing to do with whatever you’ve watched on TikTok about modern marketing roles. I must remind people that nearly all of the job titles I have held didn’t exist on a large scale 20 years ago. Are job titles invented? Yes.
After coming across the GTM Engineer job title, I took classes at Clay Academy and recently enrolled in a Clay Cohort. While I haven’t held the job title yet or worked in an operating model that uses Clay, I have used the tool personally and enjoyed learning new things.
This week, I teamed up with Bolaji Anifowose, a GTM Engineer. For the cynical, he’s actually the only male GTM Engineer I know personally. Everyone else I’ve met with this title is a woman. Make of that what you will :).
This post follows a LinkedIn AMA we held a few weeks ago where Bolaji answered a lot of questions about GTM Engineering. So here’s an intro to GTM Engineering featuring Bolaji Anifowoshe. Questions will be Q, and Answers will be A.
How to be a GTM Engineer
Q: Tell us a bit about your career background and what you do as a GTM engineer. In 2 sentences only :). Then we'll dig deeper.
A: I studied Metallurgical Engineering, then pivoted into tech marketing, working at multiple tech companies. Today I'm a GTM Engineer, which means I build systems with AI-powered tools and automation that help companies fix revenue problems.
Q: Awesome! You've held multiple marketing roles previously. What key things make GTM Engineering different?
A: I love this question. I think the biggest difference is the shift from planning and executing marketing campaigns to engineering the systems that drive revenue.
Traditional marketing roles often focus on strategy, messaging, and channel execution. GTM Engineering brings together data, automation, AI, and tooling to build repeatable systems for identifying the right customers, reaching them with relevant messaging, generating pipeline and also building tooling/systems for other functions like sales and customer success.
The two complement each other. The strategy still matters, but GTM Engineering helps you execute it with more precision, speed, and scale.
Q: I think this is the major difference! Lots of people think it's a messaging and positioning role, like with product marketing. Can you share which channels you use when building these outbound GTM systems? Then we'll take an example next.
A: Absolutely. For outbound GTM systems, I primarily use email and LinkedIn, supported by data enrichment and intent signals to identify the right people and the right time to reach them.
Email helps with scalable, targeted outreach, while LinkedIn adds another touchpoint for engaging prospects and building familiarity. The key is connecting both channels through a single workflow, rather than treating them as separate campaigns.
The channel is just one part of the system. The real leverage comes from how you combine targeting, signals, personalization, and automation.
Q: We'll come back to data enrichment in a bit so we don't go off on a tangent. Let's take a practical example. I'm a small business contractor providing construction services in my area. What can GTM engineering do for me? Pls feel free to break it down into points.
A: I love this! Here's how I'd approach it.
Find the right customers: property developers, facility managers and local businesses in your area who regularly need construction work.
Spot opportunities and signals early: new building permits, recent property sales and new business locations are all public signals.
Build partnerships: property managers, architects and real estate agents can send you repeat work for years. Win one, and you've won a pipeline.
Launch an outbound campaign: outreach goes out, and follow-ups run on an automated sequence.
Track what works: where leads come from, how many ask for a quote, how many pay.
The goal is a system that keeps bringing in opportunities without you doing everything manually.
Q: "The goal is a system that keeps bringing in opportunities without you doing everything manually." Spot on. Let's talk a bit about enrichment.
I feel like LLMs and AI have enabled a lot. How does AI help GTM engineering, and what have tools like Clay enabled in this space?
A: I think AI has changed the game in three major ways:
AI can research companies, analyse websites, identify relevant buying signals, and help determine whether an account fits your ICP- tasks that would take hours to do manually.
Instead of sending generic messages, you can use AI to find relevant context about each prospect and tailor your outreach around it.
You can build workflows that research leads, score them, and trigger the next action based on specific criteria, with much less manual work.
Tools like Clay bring a lot of this together. You can combine data from multiple providers, use AI to research prospects, and feed the results into automated GTM workflows without manually stitching everything together.
For me, the biggest shift is that we're no longer limited to the data that already exists in a database. AI lets us research the web, find context that isn't readily available, and turn that information into actions.
Q: Any chance that this may also be helpful in B2C? It seems the skill is mostly demanded in B2B.
A: Absolutely. I think GTM Engineering can be just as useful in B2C. The difference is in how you apply it.
For B2B, you're often finding specific companies and decision-makers. In B2C, you're more likely to build systems around customer behaviour, purchase intent, segmentation, and personalisation at scale.
Think e-commerce brands identifying customers likely to repurchase, or an edtech company automating campaigns based on what a learner is interested in.
The principles are the same. You're using data, automation, and AI to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. The channels and workflows just look a little different.
Q: One hot take is that there isn't much "engineering" going on. I have used Clay, and I absolutely don't agree. How technical do you have to be in GTM Engineering, and how much "engineering" do you do day to day?
A: I think it depends on what you're building. You don't need to be a software engineer to get started, but you do need an engineering mindset.
Day to day, I'm building workflows, connecting APIs, working with data, writing logic, troubleshooting automations, and increasingly using code to build things that go beyond what no-code tools can do.
Tools like Clay, n8n & Claude Code make a lot of this accessible, but building a workflow that works reliably at scale is very different from simply connecting a few columns.
For me, the engineering is in how you design the system, handle edge cases, and make sure everything works together to drive revenue. As AI coding tools get better, the ceiling for what a GTM Engineer can build keeps rising.
Conclusion
I hope this post helps anyone who’s a bit confused about the GTM Engineer job title, even though they see it all over their LinkedIn feed. If you're already applying these principles, skills, and tools in your marketing role, well done! If you liked this conversational format, please reply and let me know; I will invite more professionals for an interesting conversation.
Here are more links to resources to get you started with GTM Engineering.
Get 30% off Treford's GTM Engineering Course, led by Bolaji, Oyinlola Akindele, and Imran Adam. Use code BINJO for 30% off. Starts November 7th.
FREE Intro to GTM Engineering Course by Bolaji.
Clay Events might come to your city.
What is GTM Engineering? By Rory Woodbridge and Alex Lindhal - founding GTM Engineer at Clay.
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