New here? Hi, I’m Alex Lindahl, Creator in Residence at Clay. You can find me on GTM Engineering YouTube channel, X where I post daily GTM plays, and r/gtmengineering where I host weekly AMAs. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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The 2027 State of GTM Engineering Report is open for submissions!
Last year, Garrett Wolfe and I launched the 1st State of GTM Engineering report. The response surpassed our expectations:
225 GTM Engineers took the survey
The report was downloaded 2,250 times
~50,000 report impressions
Nearly 40% of downloads were from C-suite and managers
This year it will be even bigger with 35 partners who are providing perks.
We’d love for you to take the survey.
I’m eager to see what’s changed. We already know that the job is being offered $295k. What would I most like to see change?
More equity for GTM Engineers
Better organizational understanding of the role
Reduced capacity bottleneck
I thought it’d be interesting to review the findings from last year.
Executive Summary: 2026 State of GTME
Compensation - $135k median salary for in-house GTMEs
US in-house GTMEs earn a $135K median - but the range runs from $60K to $250K+. Non-US peers sit at $75K median. Meanwhile, job postings tell a different story: across 224 listings, the median job posting salary is $150K. The gap suggests survey respondents skew lower partly because several companies declined to share data. At the bottom of the distribution, GTMEs are being paid $30K-$65K for roles carrying pipeline ownership, cross-functional authority, and technical scope that rivals senior engineering. The market has not priced this function correctly yet.
Equity - 68% have no meaningful equity
Despite owning pipeline, ARR, and the revenue infrastructure these companies run on, most GTMEs hold 0-0.10% or nothing. At Seed and Series B - stages where GTM systems are being built from the ground up - 70%+ carry negligible or zero equity. For a role this leveraged, that's a structural mismatch. We expect it to change as the function formalizes.
Agencies - massive range from $1,000 - $33,000 a month
Agency minimum fees median at $5K/mo, maximums at $8K/mo, but the full range ($1K-$33K) reflects a market still figuring out what it's buying. "Done-for-you outbound" and "done-with-you systems architecture" are not the same service - and aren't priced the same. What agencies do, how they work, and what they actually deliver varies enormously. Diligence the scope before signing.
AI tooling - Clay is near universal, but wishes for ‘all-in-one’ outbound
Clay sits at 84% overall adoption (96% among agencies) - but it's also the most-frustrating tool in the stack, not just the most-used. Cursor and Claude Code have hit 70%+ adoption with almost no frustration - the strongest love-to-frustration ratio in the data. Notably, Unify registers just 8.8% adoption despite positioning squarely in this market. That's interesting because the #1 tool respondents wish existed is an all-in-one outbound platform - cited by 12%. The demand is there; no single product has captured it yet. Unify and a few others may want to be that product - the data says the market is waiting.
Org understanding - majority don’t understand the role
Only 38% say their organization clearly understands the role. Another 44% describe it as partial at best - or a flat no. This isn't a messaging problem. It's a maturity problem. The function is new, the scope is wide, and most organizations don't yet have a mental model for what GTM Engineering actually is.
#1 Bottleneck - capacity
25% cite time and capacity as their #1 bottleneck - ahead of tool complexity (17%), internal buy-in (8%), and data quality (3%). GTMEs aren't blocked by budget. They're blocked by prioritization, headcount, and the compounding tax of operating as a one-person infrastructure team across 7+ workflow domains.
Breaking into GTM Eng. - 52% are self-taught
52.6% broke into GTM engineering by learning the tools on their own, not through a degree or a formal path.
Thank you in advance for helping to support this initiative.
And special thanks to Garrett Wolfe for this massive contribution to the community. This was all him. I’m just here to support and spread awareness.
Only 38% saying their org clearly understands the role tracks. Hard to argue for equity when nobody can describe the job yet.