Expertise
GTM recruitment for SaaS and AI companies
GTM is a system — marketing, sales, pre-sales and post-sales, plus the management layer that holds the handovers together. We help founders and revenue leaders decide the shape before they hire into it.
Meet our founder, Ash, within 48 hours.
100+ placements · Seed to Series C · US & EMEA
- 01MarketingCreates attention and inbound
- 02SalesSDRs create pipeline, AEs own the deal
- 03Pre-SalesProves the product survives evaluation
- 04Post-SalesRetains, expands, renews
Go-to-market is a system, not a set of job titles. Pipeline creation, technical validation, closing, onboarding, retention and the operations layer that measures all of it either fit together or quietly cancel each other out.
Tipped recruits across that whole system, which is why several of our engagements are function-building programmes rather than single searches.
The system
How the functions of a SaaS company actually run
Marketing creates attention, SDRs create conversations, AEs own the commercial outcome, pre-sales proves the product survives evaluation, and post-sales turns one contract into a growing account. The management layer exists to keep those handovers honest.
The naming problem
Half of these titles mean the same thing
GTM is used interchangeably at three completely different altitudes. Some companies use it to mean the whole commercial function. Some use it to mean the sales team. And plenty of job adverts now use GTM Lead to mean one salesperson with a laptop and a target.
That matters when you hire. A candidate who calls themselves a GTM hire may have built a function, or may have carried a bag. Two “Account Executive” CVs can describe a $12K self-serve close and a $400K committee sale. The title tells you almost nothing; the motion, deal size and who they sold to tells you everything.
We brief on evidence rather than titles: what they sold, to whom, at what price point, with how much support, and what they personally created.
Glossary of roles
The four GTM families, and every title they hide behind
Sales
Quota-carrying revenue
Anyone personally accountable for a number.
SDR
Also called: BDR · Business Development Rep · Outbound Rep · GTM Associate
Creates first conversations. Paid on meetings or pipeline, not closed revenue.
Account Executive
Also called: AE · Sales Executive · GTM Lead · Founding AE · Commercial Manager
Owns the deal end to end. Mid-market, enterprise and strategic are scope, not seniority.
Enterprise AE
Also called: Strategic AE · Major Accounts · Named Accounts · Global Account Director
Multi-threaded, committee-driven cycles with procurement and security in the room.
Pre-Sales
Technical validation
Proves the product does what sales says it does.
Solutions Engineer
Also called: SE · Sales Engineer · Pre-Sales Engineer · Technical Account Lead
Demos, architecture, security reviews and the technical win.
Solutions Consultant
Also called: SC · Value Consultant · Solutions Architect (commercial)
Business-process led rather than code led. Often the same seat with a different accent.
Forward Deployed Engineer
Also called: FDE · Deployment Engineer · Applied AI Engineer
New in AI companies: builds inside the customer's environment during the sale.
Post-Sales
Retention and expansion
Owns the revenue after the signature.
Customer Success Manager
Also called: CSM · Customer Success Partner · Onboarding Manager
Adoption, health and renewal risk. Sometimes carries a number, sometimes not.
Account Manager
Also called: AM · Client Director · Relationship Manager · Expansion AE
Growth inside existing accounts. In many companies this is a sales seat by another name.
Renewals
Also called: Renewals Manager · Commercial CSM
Split out once the base is large enough to defend on its own.
Marketing & Operations
Demand and measurement
Creates attention, and makes the rest legible.
Demand Generation
Also called: Growth Marketing · Performance Marketing · Pipeline Marketing
Accountable for sourced pipeline, not impressions.
Product Marketing
Also called: PMM · Messaging Lead · Competitive Intel
Positioning, narrative and the sales assets the AEs actually use.
Revenue Operations
Also called: RevOps · Sales Ops · GTM Engineer · GTM Ops
Systems, data, comp design and forecasting. GTM engineer is now its own hot title.
GTM hiring in 2026: what founders are asking
- What is a GTM team, and how is it different from a sales team?
- A GTM team is the whole commercial system: marketing creating demand, SDRs creating conversations, Account Executives owning deals, pre-sales proving the product survives technical evaluation, and customer success and account management owning revenue after signature. Sales is one layer of it. Companies that hire a sales team without the layers around it usually discover the constraint was never closing capacity.
- Who should we hire first when building a GTM team?
- At Seed, one senior seller who can create their own pipeline and hold a technical conversation, supported by the founder. Post-Series A, the usual order is a second seller to prove the first was repeatable, then pre-sales once technical evaluation is the bottleneck, then SDRs once you know which message converts, then post-sales before your first renewal cohort. Hiring a VP Sales before there is a repeatable motion is the most common and expensive inversion of that order.
- How has AI changed what a GTM hire needs to be good at?
- The job description moved from 'close new logos' to 'prove value fast and expand usage'. Gartner expects 40% of enterprise applications to embed task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% in 2025, which breaks per-seat pricing — 48% of B2B SaaS companies now run hybrid pricing as their primary model. Briefs are shifting toward technical, consumption-literate sellers rather than classic enterprise closers.
- Does AI actually improve GTM performance, or just the top of the funnel?
- Mostly the top of the funnel. ICONIQ found AI-driven pipeline generation producing real gains — more and better-qualified opportunities — but little material change once a deal is in an active cycle. Lead generation and call transcription lead adoption; AI-driven forecasting sits at around 38%, and pipeline efficiency and unit economics are not yet showing meaningful improvement from AI investment. The implication for hiring is that the human skill you still have to buy is closing and expansion, not prospecting volume.
- How should we design quota and commission under consumption pricing?
- Where there is no upfront commitment, quotas are increasingly set off forecasted consumption, with commission structured to balance predictability against actual usage and clawbacks typically 3–6 months post-close on $50K+ ACVs. AEs are more often carried on net new recurring revenue and net dollar retention than bookings alone. We benchmark this as part of the diagnosis, because the comp plan decides which candidates say yes.
- What are sales cycles doing, and what does that mean for the profile we hire?
- Cycles fell from roughly 25 weeks to 19 in a single year, while sub-one-year contracts climbed from 4% of deals to 13% and three-year deals slid from 28% to 23%. More deals in flight, less locked in. Land-and-expand skill now matters more than pure closing skill, which changes both the shortlist and how post-sales is staffed.
- What is a GTM engineer, and do we need one?
- GTM engineer and forward deployed engineer are the two roles reshaping org charts. GTME postings rose 205% year over year from 2024 to 2025, running at roughly 100 new listings a month, and Adobe, Salesforce and Google Cloud all stood up dedicated forward deployed AI engineer functions in 2026 alongside existing sales engineering teams. Benchmarks put FDEs at $175K–$260K base and $230K–$360K OTE, with enterprise AEs at $300K–$350K OTE and top performers past $400K. You need one when your motion depends on building inside the customer's environment during the sale — not simply because the title is fashionable.
- Is product-led growth still the right way to build pipeline?
- Not on its own. High-growth companies draw 60–80% of pipeline from sales and channel-generated sources versus 15–20% from marketing, and channel partnerships represent 27–31% of revenue for high-growth companies. Free trials and POCs convert at around 50%, well above any other motion. Seller-led pipeline is back, which means SDR and AE self-sourcing capability is a hiring criterion again rather than a nice-to-have.
The offer
A free 30-minute GTM team diagnosis with the founder — then a 10-day sprint you only pay for if you hire.
I built and scaled these teams myself. I made the hiring mistakes — that’s why I started Tipped.
Ash Takher
Founder · built and scaled GTM teams before recruiting for them
- Optimizely — $40m → $140m ARR
- Sensor Tower — Employee #1 in EMEA
- ByteDance · AI Lab — Led Western EMEA
Not a recruiter who found sales. An operator who built and scaled the teams you are hiring for.
What you get in the 30-minute diagnosis
Free · no brief needed
01Your org chart, stress-tested
Which seats you actually have, which are missing, and which one is quietly doing two jobs.
02Sequencing
What to hire first at your stage and revenue, and what that hire has to produce before the next one.
03Compensation and quota design
Base, OTE, quota and ramp against live comparators — including consumption and hybrid pricing models.
04Evidence to hire on
The competencies a shortlist must prove for each seat, and the profiles that never work for it.
Then, if it makes sense
A 10-day search sprint
We work together for ten working days per seat — mapped market, verified evidence, shortlist with written rationale.
How you pay
Only if you hire
No retainer on the diagnosis, and nothing owed unless you actually hire the person we introduce.
Meet Ash within 48 hours.
Prefer email? hello@tippedrecruitment.com
Not sure which GTM seat to open first?
Tell us the stage, the motion and the number you have to hit. You will get a straight view on the shape of the team and the order to hire it in.