SaaS startups and artificial intelligence companies are now automating an increasing share of their commercial operations.
Prospecting, acquisition, CRM management, data enrichment, lead routing, reporting, onboarding, scoring and marketing automation: the number of tools used by sales and marketing teams keeps growing, and Go-To-Market stacks are becoming increasingly complex.
As a result, a new role is gaining importance in tech companies: the GTM Engineer, or Go-To-Market Engineer.
Still relatively unknown in France, this hybrid profile sits at the intersection of technology, RevOps, Growth and automation. Its main mission is to build systems that make commercial teams more efficient and support the company’s growth.
What is a GTM Engineer ?
A GTM Engineer is a professional who can design, connect and automate the different tools and processes that help a company sell, prospect and manage its growth.
They typically work on:
- sales workflows;
- CRM automations;
- marketing tools;
- integrations between different SaaS solutions;
- data pipelines and data flows;
- outbound prospecting systems;
- dashboards and reporting tools;
- artificial intelligence solutions used by revenue teams.
The need for a GTM Engineer usually appears when an organisation starts scaling quickly.
Sales teams grow, tools accumulate and some processes become increasingly difficult to manage manually. The company then needs to structure its technology stack in order to continue growing without multiplying repetitive tasks.
The role of the GTM Engineer is precisely to transform fragmented operations into reliable, automated and scalable systems.
Why is artificial intelligence accelerating the rise of GTM Engineering ?
The growth of artificial intelligence is playing a major role in the development of this profession.
Sales teams now use a wide range of AI-powered tools, including:
- automated outbound agents;
- intelligent prospect enrichment;
- sales assistants and copilots;
- AI-generated personalised sequences;
- scoring systems;
- multichannel automations;
- workflows powered by AI models.
However, the challenge is no longer simply having access to these tools.
Companies also need to connect, monitor, optimise and properly integrate them into their existing systems.
This is exactly where the GTM Engineer comes in.
Their role is to create connections between AI tools, commercial data, the CRM and the company’s operational workflows.
Artificial intelligence therefore makes it possible to automate more tasks, but it also increases the technical complexity of Go-To-Market environments. Companies increasingly need professionals who can manage this new architecture.
What does a GTM Engineer actually do ?
Unlike a traditional software developer, a GTM Engineer does not necessarily spend the entire day building applications.
Their main objective is to identify friction points within commercial operations and then build systems that remove them.
Imagine a SaaS startup generating 500 new leads per week.
Without automation, several tasks may still be handled manually:
- prospect qualification;
- LinkedIn research;
- data enrichment;
- assigning leads to the right salesperson;
- updating the CRM;
- monitoring performance;
- sales follow-ups.
At scale, this way of working quickly becomes time-consuming.
A GTM Engineer can build a system that:
- connects HubSpot to different APIs;
- automatically enriches prospect data;
- assigns a score to each lead;
- segments prospects;
- automatically routes each lead to the right salesperson;
- triggers certain actions or sequences using AI;
- automates part of the follow-up process;
- centralises data in real-time dashboards.
The company therefore gains a much more structured sales system.
Teams spend less time on administrative tasks and can focus on higher-value activities such as understanding prospects’ needs, managing negotiations and closing deals.
GTM Engineer and RevOps: two complementary roles
RevOps, or Revenue Operations, already plays an important role within SaaS organisations.
Its mission generally consists of aligning sales, marketing and customer success teams around shared processes, metrics and objectives.
The GTM Engineer focuses more heavily on the technical side of this organisation.
The difference can be summarised as follows:
RevOps designs the processes. The GTM Engineer builds the systems that automate them.
For example, a RevOps Manager may decide that a lead from a company with more than 500 employees should immediately be assigned to a senior Account Executive.
The GTM Engineer can then build the system that:
- automatically identifies the company’s size;
- enriches the prospect’s information;
- assigns a lead score;
- selects the appropriate salesperson;
- creates or updates the record in the CRM;
- sends a notification to the salesperson;
- measures the performance of the process.
The two roles are therefore highly complementary in organisations with complex commercial technology stacks.
What tools does a GTM Engineer use?
One of the defining characteristics of the role is the variety of tools involved.
CRM
GTM Engineers usually work with major CRM platforms such as:
- HubSpot;
- Salesforce;
- Pipedrive.
Automation and no-code
Automation platforms also play a central role:
- Make;
- Zapier;
- n8n;
- Clay.
These solutions make it possible to quickly build workflows connecting multiple applications.
Data
Depending on the maturity of the company, a GTM Engineer may also work with:
- Snowflake;
- BigQuery;
- Airtable;
- different internal databases.
Outbound prospecting
The sales stack may include tools such as:
- Apollo;
- Lemlist;
- Instantly;
- Smartlead.
Artificial intelligence
With the rise of generative AI, GTM Engineers also work with models and platforms such as:
- OpenAI;
- Claude;
- Gemini;
- different AI agents and workflows.
Reporting and Business Intelligence
Finally, measuring performance remains essential.
A GTM Engineer may therefore build or manage dashboards using:
- Looker Studio;
- Metabase;
- Tableau.
The role combines no-code, low-code, APIs, automation, data and scripting.
GTM Engineer or Growth Engineer: what is the difference?
The line between GTM Engineering and Growth Engineering can sometimes be unclear.
In some startups, the responsibilities may even overlap.
A Growth Engineer generally focuses more on areas such as:
- acquisition;
- funnel optimisation;
- experimentation;
- conversion;
- product tracking;
- growth-focused testing.
A GTM Engineer works more broadly across the company’s commercial and operational infrastructure:
- CRM;
- prospecting;
- data management;
- sales automation;
- revenue workflows;
- business tool integrations.
The Growth Engineer therefore primarily looks for ways to create or optimise growth levers, while the GTM Engineer builds the infrastructure that enables commercial teams to operate efficiently at scale.
In smaller organisations, however, the same person may cover both areas.
Why are AI startups increasingly hiring GTM Engineers?
Artificial intelligence startups often grow extremely quickly.
Their sales teams can double in size within a few months, while new tools are constantly being added to their technology stack.
Without a clear architecture, several problems can quickly appear:
- too many software tools;
- fragile automations;
- duplicated or inconsistent data;
- workflows that are difficult to maintain;
- incomplete reporting;
- wasted time for sales teams;
- limited visibility into performance.
The GTM Engineer helps companies regain control over this complexity.
They build an infrastructure that connects tools, standardises data flows and automates repetitive tasks.
Their work can therefore have a direct impact on several key business metrics, including sales productivity, lead response time, conversion rates and reporting quality.
This challenge is particularly important for B2B SaaS companies, where commercial performance often depends on a large number of interconnected tools.
What skills are essential for becoming a GTM Engineer?
GTM Engineering requires a relatively unusual combination of skills.
Being a developer, CRM specialist or marketing expert alone is not enough.
A strong GTM Engineer needs to understand:
- commercial challenges;
- sales processes;
- how CRMs work;
- automation systems;
- data;
- APIs;
- SaaS tools;
- the opportunities created by artificial intelligence.
From a technical perspective, some of the most sought-after skills include:
- HubSpot or Salesforce;
- SQL;
- Python;
- REST APIs;
- no-code and low-code tools;
- automation;
- data management;
- AI integrations.
However, the most important skill is probably the ability to understand an operational problem and design a simple, reliable and scalable solution.
A GTM Engineer does not automate simply for the sake of automation.
They first need to understand how the business works before deciding which parts of a process should actually be automated.
What types of profiles can move into GTM Engineering?
Because the profession is still relatively new, there is no single career path for becoming a GTM Engineer.
Professionals moving into this role often come from different backgrounds, including:
- RevOps;
- SalesOps;
- GrowthOps;
- Growth Marketing;
- automation consulting;
- no-code development;
- data;
- business-oriented software development;
- operations management.
What they generally have in common is a strong interest in problem-solving and the ability to navigate between business challenges and technical issues.
An Operations Manager who is particularly comfortable with automation can therefore move into GTM Engineering, just as a developer who wants to work more closely with commercial challenges can.
What is the salary of a GTM Engineer?
The French GTM Engineering market is still relatively young, and salaries can vary significantly depending on experience, company size and the level of technical expertise required.
As a general indication, compensation levels may be around:
- €45,000 to €60,000 per year for a junior profile;
- €60,000 to €90,000 for an experienced profile;
- €100,000 or more for certain senior profiles working in scale-ups or international companies.
Professionals who can combine CRM expertise, automation, data and artificial intelligence may benefit from particularly strong demand.
However, the market is still developing and job titles can vary considerably from one company to another.
Could the GTM Engineer become an essential role?
There are many reasons to believe that the profession will continue to grow over the coming years.
Commercial teams are increasingly using:
- AI agents;
- automations;
- SaaS platforms;
- interconnected data systems;
- specialised tools.
At the same time, companies are looking to improve productivity without increasing headcount at the same pace as revenue.
This creates a clear need for professionals who can build and maintain this entire infrastructure.
The GTM Engineer directly addresses this challenge.
Positioned at the intersection of business, technology, data, automation and artificial intelligence, the role could gradually become one of the key functions within modern Go-To-Market organisations.
Still emerging in France today, GTM Engineering could follow a similar trajectory to RevOps: initially adopted by the most advanced startups before gradually becoming a standard function within SaaS and technology companies.
