Head of Growth Job Description: Template & Hiring Guide

Most founders post a head of growth job description that describes what they want the person to do — not what that person actually needs to be. The result is a role that attracts the wrong candidates, sets impossible expectations, and produces nothing within the first 90 days.

A precise head of growth job description is not a list of tasks. It is a signal to the market about your company's growth stage, your operating model, and the specific growth lever you are ready to pull. Get it wrong and you will hire someone great at scaling channels you do not have.

This guide covers:

• What a head of growth actually does at each company stage
• The core responsibilities and required skills for the role
• How the role differs from VP of Marketing, CRO, and growth manager
• A complete, copy-ready job description template
• 2026 salary benchmarks and equity ranges
• A stage-specific hiring framework to avoid the most common mistakes

What a Head of Growth Actually Does

The head of growth role is one of the most misunderstood titles in the startup ecosystem. Job boards describe it as "owning marketing and growth." Founders hire for it at the wrong stage. Candidates apply for it as a stepping stone to CMO.

The clearest definition: a head of growth is a scientist who builds and operates the revenue expansion engine. They treat user acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization as a single connected system — not four separate departments.

This framing matters for the job description. If you write a head of growth JD that looks like a senior marketing manager's, you will attract senior marketing managers.

The AARRR Framework: What Growth Leaders Own

Growth leaders use the AARRR (or "pirate metrics") framework to structure their work. Each stage represents a distinct lever with its own metrics, experiments, and owners:

Most companies make the mistake of assigning only the top two rows to the head of growth and calling it "growth marketing." That is not the job. The head of growth owns the system as a whole — they pull the right lever at the right stage and hand off tactics to specialized teams once a channel is proven.

What a Head of Growth Does Not Do

Equally important: what this role is not.

• A head of growth does not manage brand strategy or PR
• A head of growth does not own sales quota or manage account executives
• A head of growth does not set the product roadmap — they inform it
• A head of growth is not a "marketing manager plus one level"
• A head of growth is not a substitute for product-market fit

The last point is the one most founders ignore. As Andrew Chen notes in his hiring framework, the biggest mistake founders make is trying to "abdicate responsibility for their growth efforts" and expecting a single hire to solve everything. The head of growth amplifies a system that works. They cannot build the system from scratch if the product does not yet retain users.

Core Responsibilities of a Head of Growth

The responsibilities listed in most head of growth job descriptions are vague to the point of uselessness. "Drive growth" is not a responsibility. Below is a precise, stage-appropriate breakdown of what a head of growth actually owns.

Strategy and Planning

• Define the company's growth model — whether sales-led, product-led, or hybrid — and document the assumptions behind it
• Set quarterly growth OKRs aligned to company ARR and expansion targets
• Build and prioritize the experimentation backlog across acquisition, activation, and retention
• Identify the 1-3 growth levers with the highest expected return and direct resources accordingly
• Establish the growth operating rhythm: weekly experiment reviews, monthly channel performance reviews, quarterly strategy recalibrations

Execution and Experimentation

• Design, run, and analyze A/B and multivariate tests across marketing channels, onboarding flows, and pricing pages
• Build and scale the highest-performing acquisition channels from scratch — SEO, paid, referral, PLG viral loops, or community
• Optimize conversion at every funnel stage, from first touch to active user
• Own the growth technology stack: analytics, attribution, marketing automation, CDP
• Maintain attribution integrity — ensure every dollar of spend is traceable to a revenue outcome

Attribution is where most growth programs break down. If the head of growth cannot explain the revenue contribution of each active channel, the entire strategy is operating on assumption. This is a significant operational risk — and one that connects directly to the quality of CMO dashboard metrics and how marketing investments are reported at the executive level.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with product to embed growth into onboarding, activation, and in-app upgrade flows
• Align with sales leadership on MQL-to-SQL handoff quality, conversion rates, and pipeline velocity
• Partner with engineering on instrumentation — event tracking, funnel analytics, feature flags for experiments
• Report growth performance to the CEO and board with clear attribution to revenue impact
• Hire, manage, and develop a team of growth marketers, growth product managers, and analysts

Metrics Ownership

A head of growth should own — and be held accountable to — a specific set of metrics. These are not vanity metrics. They are operational signals that connect growth activity to revenue.

These metrics belong in a single operating view — not spread across five different dashboards. Effective RevOps metrics frameworks treat growth metrics as connected to sales and retention rather than as siloed marketing outputs.

Required Skills and Qualifications

The head of growth skill set is T-shaped by design: deep expertise in one growth channel combined with working fluency across all growth levers. A candidate who is expert only in paid acquisition will not see the SEO opportunity. A candidate who only knows content will miss the activation bottleneck hiding in onboarding.

Technical Skills

• SQL and data fluency: Must be able to write basic queries, interpret cohort analyses, and build growth dashboards without analyst dependency
• Experimentation design: Statistical significance, test sizing, holdout groups, sequential vs. fixed-horizon testing
• Attribution modeling: First-touch, last-touch, multi-touch, data-driven — and their limitations at each funnel stage
• Growth tooling: Amplitude or Mixpanel for product analytics, HubSpot or Salesforce for CRM, Google Ads and Meta Ads for paid, a marketing automation platform
• SEO and content strategy: Keyword clustering, topical authority, programmatic SEO at scale
• Funnel optimization: Landing page testing, onboarding flow design, email lifecycle sequencing

Strategic and Leadership Skills

• Systems thinking: Ability to see acquisition, retention, and monetization as a single connected model — not independent programs
• Prioritization: Knowing which experiment to run next based on expected value, confidence, and resource cost
• Cross-functional influence: Persuading product and engineering to prioritize growth work without direct authority
• Executive communication: Translating growth metrics into board-ready revenue narratives
• Team building: Identifying, hiring, and developing T-shaped growth specialists

What Strong Candidates Cannot Fake

In interviews for this role, great candidates ask about retention before acquisition. They want to know D30 and M12 retention rates before they discuss top-of-funnel strategy. They understand that fixing a leaky bucket before pouring more water in is not just a metaphor — it is the correct growth prioritization framework.

Weak candidates reverse this. They propose doubling paid acquisition budgets without knowing the activation rate. They propose a referral program without knowing whether existing users are retained past 30 days.

If a growth candidate does not ask about retention, LTV, and the biggest dropoffs in your funnel during the interview, that is a disqualifying signal — not a yellow flag.

Head of Growth vs. VP of Marketing: A Clear Comparison

These two roles are frequently confused. Founders sometimes use them interchangeably. That confusion results in hiring the wrong person for what the company actually needs.

The operational distinction: a head of growth thinks like a product manager who happens to own marketing channels. A VP of marketing thinks like a brand strategist who operates through campaigns. Both roles are legitimate. The error is hiring one when you need the other.

According to OpenView Partners' research on PLG organizational structures, growth functions at product-led companies rarely report through marketing — and when they do, activation and conversion optimization suffer as a result. The growth function needs proximity to product and engineering, not brand and content.

For context on how these distinctions affect downstream revenue reporting, see how pipeline health metrics differ depending on whether acquisition is driven by marketing-qualified leads or product-qualified accounts.

Head of Growth Salary Benchmarks (2026)

Compensation for this role varies significantly by company stage, geography, and whether equity is included. Base salary alone is a misleading number for growth-stage companies where equity often represents 30-50% of total compensation value.

Source: Salary.com 2026 Head of Growth benchmarks.

Geography matters substantially. Top-paying cities include San Jose ($206,231), San Francisco ($203,973), and Oakland ($199,675). In the District of Columbia, the average reaches $181,035. Remote-first companies often pay at the median regardless of candidate location, with equity weighting adjusted to compensate.

Equity Benchmarks by Stage

Total compensation at Series B and beyond often reaches $250,000–$300,000 when equity is included, with top performers at high-growth companies exceeding $400,000.

Stage-Specific Hiring Framework

The most consequential decision in hiring a head of growth is timing. Hiring too early wastes the role. Hiring too late leaves repeatable channels unscaled for quarters longer than necessary. The right hire depends on where the company sits in its growth trajectory.

Andrew Chen's framework — built from advising dozens of growth teams at companies including Uber — maps growth leadership requirements to five product stages. The simplified version for SaaS founders:

Stage 1: Pre-Product-Market Fit (Do Not Hire Yet)

If D30 retention is below 15% or the product has not achieved a clear "aha moment" for at least one user segment, no head of growth hire will succeed. The issue is the product, not the growth function.

At this stage, growth is a founder's job. Hire a generalist growth marketer at most — someone who can test channels and provide data, not someone hired to "own growth."

Stage 2: Tipping Point ($500K–$3M ARR)

The company has product-market fit with at least one user cohort. One or two acquisition channels show early signs of repeatability. This is the right moment to hire a hands-on head of growth.

What to look for: Someone who has stood up a new growth channel from scratch at a comparable company. Tactical execution over management experience. Hands-on technical capability.

Red flags to disqualify: Candidates from pure brand or agency backgrounds. Candidates focused on large budget requirements. Candidates who cannot describe a specific experiment they ran, its methodology, and its outcome.

Stage 3: Escape Velocity ($3M–$20M ARR)

Multiple channels are working. The company needs to scale several levers simultaneously while protecting unit economics. This stage requires a more executive growth leader — someone who manages a team of 5-10 specialists and can report directly to the board.

What to look for: Experience managing multi-channel growth teams. Comfort with financial modeling and LTV:CAC analysis. History of building growth infrastructure (attribution systems, experimentation platforms, data pipelines).

Pre-Hire Checklist

Before posting a head of growth job description, confirm all of the following:

• D30 retention >15% in at least one user cohort
• At least $500K dedicated growth or marketing budget
• At least one channel showing early repeatability (conversion rate, CPL, or organic velocity)
• Basic analytics instrumentation in place (event tracking, funnel visibility)
• CEO and leadership team aligned on growth model (PLG vs. sales-led vs. hybrid)
• Existing marketing or sales team the head of growth can work with — not build from scratch alone

These conditions connect directly to how revenue operations should be structured before a dedicated growth leader arrives. Without RevOps foundations — attribution, CRM hygiene, funnel instrumentation — a head of growth will spend their first 6 months fixing data problems instead of running experiments.

Sample Head of Growth Job Description Template

Below is a complete, ready-to-use head of growth job description template. Customize the bracketed sections for your stage, model, and specific growth priorities.

Interview Questions That Reveal the Right Candidate

A polished resume tells you very little about growth capability. The right interview questions surface analytical depth, channel fluency, and systems thinking — the three traits that separate growth leaders who produce results from those who produce reports.

Questions to Ask Every Candidate

1. "Walk me through the growth model at your last company. How was acquisition connected to retention in your metrics?"

   What you are listening for: A systems thinker describes how leaky activation suppressed acquisition ROI. A siloed marketer talks about their channel in isolation.

2. "Tell me about a growth experiment you designed, ran, and killed. What did you learn?"

   What you are listening for: Methodological rigor (test sizing, holdout groups), comfort with failure, and the ability to extract learning from negative results.

3. "If our D30 retention is 18% and we are spending $80K/month on paid acquisition, what is the first thing you would change?"

   What you are listening for: The correct answer is to fix retention before increasing acquisition spend. A candidate who proposes optimizing ad creative has their priorities backward.

4. "How do you decide what to test next when you have 20 experiments in the backlog and capacity for 4 per month?"

   What you are listening for: A prioritization framework based on expected value, confidence level, and resource cost — not gut feel or HiPPO (highest-paid person's opinion).

5. "When a growth experiment you championed gets blocked by product or engineering, what do you do?"

   What you are listening for: Cross-functional influence without authority. A growth leader who escalates immediately is a red flag. One who builds a shared business case is the right hire.

These questions work because growth fluency cannot be memorized. A candidate who has not actually run experiments cannot accurately describe the methodology. A candidate who has not owned a broken funnel cannot describe the specific retention-before-acquisition prioritization logic that experienced growth leaders apply reflexively.

How Growth Leaders Use Operating Data

The best heads of growth treat operating data as their primary input. Not gut feel. Not competitor benchmarks. Not industry best practices. The specific conversion rates, retention curves, and attribution signals inside their company's own data.

This means a head of growth needs access to a unified operating view — one that connects marketing attribution to pipeline conversion to revenue retention in a single place. Without that view, growth decisions are made on fragmented signals. A channel that looks efficient on CAC might be producing low-LTV customers who churn in month 3.

Fairview's Pipeline Health Monitor surfaces exactly these signals — connecting acquisition data to pipeline conversion and retention outcomes so growth leaders can see which channels produce high-LTV customers, not just high-volume signups. The operating dashboard connects marketing, sales, and retention data in a single weekly view, removing the multi-tool reconciliation that typically consumes a growth leader's first hours each Monday.

For operators who want to understand how these signals connect to broader revenue accountability, the RevOps metrics framework provides a structured approach to metric ownership across the full revenue lifecycle.

According to HubSpot's State of Marketing research, 75% of top-performing marketing teams now use AI-powered predictive analytics to inform channel allocation and experiment prioritization. Growth leaders who can connect these predictive signals to their operating data will accelerate experiment velocity substantially — the research cites 42% higher experimentation velocity and 27% better conversion rates for teams using integrated marketing analytics.

For context on how executive-level revenue roles differ at the top of the org chart, the CRO job description covers the distinction between a Chief Revenue Officer — who owns the entire revenue organization — and a head of growth, who operates within it.

Common Mistakes When Writing a Head of Growth Job Description

Most head of growth job descriptions fail before the first candidate reads them. The structural problems are predictable and fixable.

Mistake 1: Writing Responsibilities Instead of Outcomes

A job description that says "manage growth marketing campaigns" tells a candidate nothing. A description that says "own CAC payback period below 12 months across all acquisition channels" tells them what they will be held accountable to.

Every responsibility in a head of growth job description should map to a measurable outcome. If it does not, it does not belong in the job description — it belongs in a general manager's job description.

Mistake 2: Requiring Irrelevant Credentials

Requiring an MBA or a degree in marketing for a head of growth role filters out the best candidates. The highest-performing growth leaders often have backgrounds in engineering, economics, data science, or product management.

Require a demonstrated track record instead: a channel they built from 0 to repeatable, a retention improvement they drove with data, an experiment that failed and what they learned.

Mistake 3: Hiding the Stage and Growth Model

A head of growth who excels at scaling a PLG self-serve funnel will likely struggle in a pure enterprise sales-led environment. A growth leader who has only worked in sales-led companies may not have the product collaboration skills required for PLG.

The job description should explicitly state: the company's growth model, the current ARR and growth rate, the size and composition of the growth team, and the primary growth lever the new leader is expected to own.

Mistake 4: Setting Unrealistic Timelines

Expecting a head of growth to show measurable results in the first 30 days is a signal that the company does not understand how growth works. The first 30 days should be entirely diagnostic: mapping the funnel, auditing attribution, reviewing experiment history, and building the growth model.

Experiments that reach statistical significance and produce actionable results typically require 4-8 weeks. A channel that reaches repeatability typically requires 3-6 months. Set expectations accordingly in the role brief.

Mistake 5: Not Addressing the Data Infrastructure

A head of growth cannot run experiments without reliable instrumentation. If event tracking is incomplete, if attribution is broken, or if the CRM does not connect to the analytics platform, the first 2-3 months will be spent on data cleanup rather than growth.

Before hiring a head of growth, audit the data infrastructure. The quality of pipeline health metrics and funnel visibility is a direct constraint on how fast the new hire can operate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

• A head of growth owns the full revenue expansion system — acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization — not just one marketing channel
• The role differs fundamentally from VP of marketing: growth is scientist-led and sprint-based; marketing is strategist-led and campaign-based
• Hiring timing matters more than the job description itself: hire after D30 retention exceeds 15%, a dedicated growth budget exists, and basic instrumentation is in place
• The 2026 median base salary is $163,507; total compensation at growth-stage companies regularly exceeds $250,000 with equity
• A precise job description sets metric-based outcomes (CAC payback, activation rate, experiment velocity) rather than vague responsibilities

The most important line in a head of growth job description is not the one about responsibilities. It is the one that defines what success looks like in 90, 180, and 365 days. Candidates who can describe exactly how they would hit those numbers — with specific channel hypotheses, experiment designs, and retention strategies — are the ones worth hiring.

Growth is a system, not a person. The head of growth builds and operates the system. The job description should say that clearly.