Marketing Jobs Over $200K

Dramatic drum roll: this is the final edition of Marketing Jobs Over $200K for 2025.

Over the past year, together, we’ve put our beady eyes over 227 senior marketing roles across the U.S., with the simple intent of providing some extra value that the JD itself doesn’t – calling out ChatGPT tells, off-kilter comp, poor organizational culture, crazy assessment routines, and ghost listings along the way – and adding a little headhunters’ POV.

In terms of job volume, we’ve watched the hopeful surge in Q1, the cold splash of Q2, and the uneasy plateau of Q3. We watched the BLS miss the mark, October layoffs hit record highs, and government data wobble like bad WiFi.

Behind the numbers were the people: many of whom found themselves caught in the churn of layoffs, consolidations, mergers, and acquisitions. Some were between chapters, and many were actively writing the next one in a different ink.

All of this, of course, played out against the growing shadow (or spotlight, depending on your perspective) of Artificial Intelligence. Rightly or wrongly, the LLM chatbot became the headline act in our collective speculation about the future of work.

Which brings me to a question that’s been simmering all year: What, exactly, is a job?

Is it simply a cluster of tasks within the grand machinery of corporate output? If so, what’s the actual product - especially in the service economy? Is it data, delight, connection, trust? And where, in all this, do we fit in as humans? Are we the architects of work, or increasingly shaped by it? When the two, human and job, start to uncouple, what’s left in the wake?

If we’re no longer productive and engaged employees, do we lose clout as consumers, audiences, citizens?

Anyhow, back to reality. As of this week, there are 34,713 in-house marketing jobs posted across the U.S., almost identical to where we were a year ago, down by just 16 listings. In a year like this, that kind of steadiness is something, truly.

4,753 of those jobs are at Director level or higher, marking an 11% increase from last year. Demand for senior marketing talent remains strong.

More than half of all postings (54.5%) now include salary information. The median salary for senior marketing roles currently sits at $154,752, while the overall median across all marketing jobs is $87,506.

Here’s how that breaks down by title:

• Chief Marketing Officer: $250,006

• SVP/Head of Marketing: $212,493

• VP/Director of Marketing: $164,996

• Marketing Manager: $121,576

• Marketing Specialist: $70,502

Regionally, salaries reflect familiar patterns. San Francisco leads in median pay for senior marketing pros at $187,502, followed by Seattle, Boston, and New York, all sitting above the $150K mark. New York also offers the most roles overall.

Median Salary for Director-level and Above in Top Hiring Cities

So, while the bigger questions about the future of work continue to evolve, the current snapshot suggests that for experienced marketers, opportunities remain steady - and in many places, promising. The Chatbot hasn’t had a meaningful impact yet, even though we are already 2yrs+ into somewhat “adoption”.

Let’s investigate 3 roles that caught our attention this week, but before we jump in, a lil’ reminder that freedom of expression still exists here because of our legal disclaimer.

Most of our "red flag" breakdowns focus on the job description, but if you look at the people currently sitting in the marketing seats at Affirm, a much clearer, scarier picture emerges.

This isn't a growth role; it’s a political sandwich where you are the meat.

First, you aren’t reporting to a stable leader, but rather walking into a fresh crater. The long-standing VP of Marketing & Communications, Erika White, appears to have exited the building in March 2025 to move to Navan which went IPO and the stock tanked.

When a VP leaves and they hire a "Senior Director" underneath that empty or interim seat, they are usually looking for someone to do the VP's job at a Director's salary without the authority to actually fix the mess left behind.

The single biggest dealbreaker, however, is the incumbent you would be layering. One employee is currently listed as the Director of Brand Marketing and has held that specific title since October 2022, having been with the brand team since early 2021. She already claims to oversee social media, drive seasonal campaigns, and manage a staff of 11 direct and indirect reports. If you come in as a Senior Director, you are effectively demoting the person who built the function from scratch.

You will likely spend your first year fighting a guerilla war against a tenured Director who holds the institutional knowledge, the vendor relationships, and the loyalty of the direct reports.

If you think this is a Marketing role, look at the recent hiring spree which is overwhelmingly skewed toward Communications, Crisis, and Internal Control. In the last 18 months or so, the company has stacked the deck with risk-focused roles, including a Senior Director of Financial Comms who has been there since 2022, a Senior Communications Manager who joined in March 2025, a Communications Lead added in March 2024, and another Communications hire in October 2024. The sheer density of Comms directors compared to Brand leadership suggests that every creative brief you write will likely die in a reputation review (no wonder they welcome tenured agency backgrounds - where Stamina lives)

Finally, the presence of a Creative Program Manager, Anne Keck, who was installed in January 2024, signals that the operational "how" is likely already valued more than the creative "what." When Creative Ops is installed before a new creative leader arrives, it often means the operational ‘how’ is already locked in, limiting your ability to change the workflow.

This department is in the middle of a silent reset where the Comms organ has rejected the Brand transplant; let them figure out their org chart before you let them ruin your resume.

The verdict is a hard pass; do not apply unless you enjoy refereeing a cage match where everyone else has been training longer than you. Buy Now Pay Later already lives in a reputational gray zone with regulators and consumer advocates, and this org chart doesn’t suggest Brand will have much power to nudge it toward the light.

If the Affirm role was a crime scene, this Uber position is a high-stakes war room where you aren't being hired to build a commercial brand, but rather to supply ammunition for a political campaign.

While the job title says "Head of Brand Marketing Science," the reporting structure reveals the true nature of the assignment. Uber does not have a traditional Chief Marketing Officer raised in the school of CPG or ad agencies; instead, the marketing function is led by Jill Hazelbaker, whose official title is "Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Policy".

A look at Hazelbaker’s background clarifies exactly why this "Science" role exists and why it is so heavily weighted toward defense. She is a veteran political communicator who ran national campaigns. Before joining Uber ten years ago, she ran Communications and Public Policy for Google in Europe. This is a leader who intuitively understands brand value as "voter sentiment" and "polling numbers," but she is operating inside a ruthlessly quantitative, engineering-led company that only speaks the language of CAC and LTV.

This context transforms the "Head of Brand Marketing Science" from a standard analytics job into a critical translation role. You are not being hired to optimize media mix for the sake of efficiency; you are being hired to produce the statistical evidence that allows a Comms-driven CMO to justify her budget to a Finance-driven CFO.

The job description’s obsession with "causal inference" and "incrementality" is the corporate equivalent of proving that a campaign speech actually turned out the vote. Hazelbaker needs a high-level quant to prove that "reputation" (her specialty) drives "revenue" (the company’s requirement), because without that mathematical proof, the brand budget is viewed as defenseless fat.

The red flags in the description, specifically the demand for a strategic leader who also possesses "strong proficiency in Python/R", signal that you will be a team of one or few, expected to write the code yourself while simultaneously presenting "executive-ready storytelling."

Uber is hiring a data mercenary who can turn reputation metrics into P&L ammunition for a Comms-first CMO. If you love writing Python that proves “sentiment = trips,” step right up. If you want to own media mix and chase growth, this is the wrong battlefield.

The job description for the Chief Marketing Officer at Fellow paints a picture of a sleek, design-forward opportunity, but a forensic look at the funding history and market reality reveals a much more complex battleground.

My read on this, is that it’s a high-stakes equity gamble where you are effectively being asked to serve as a General Manager for a "Head of" salary while navigating a financial ticking clock.

The financial context here is critical and worth understanding. Fellow raised its headline $30M Series B in June 2022 - right at the tail end of the "easy money" era. That round was led by NextWorld Evergreen and marketed on the back of the founder’s claim that the company had been profitable for 5 years and growing 100% year-over-year.  

You are walking into a company that is likely nearing the end of that 2022 cash injection. In the 3 years since that raise, the cost of capital has skyrocketed and consumer discretionary spending on $300 kettles has softened. You aren't just battling tariffs and competitors like Breville and Smeg with more CAPEX muscle; you are fighting the "Series B Clock."

The pressure to show massive growth to justify that 2022 valuation is likely intense, and since hardware margins are unforgiving, the marketing budget will be the first place they look to conserve cash. You are being hired to engineer a miracle: scale a niche coffee brand into a household kitchen name using a budget that is likely tighter today than it was three years ago.

The operational reality described - scaling a team from "6 to ~20+" - indicates that despite the revenue, the marketing organization is currently running on fumes, stuck in its "bootstrapped" mindset even after taking venture capital. A $100M brand supported by only six marketers is very lean indeed. As the incoming Chief, you will likely be writing copy and approving social posts yourself because the ‘Kickstarter DNA’ remains...

You are being hired to build the machine while simultaneously driving the car, all while reporting to a Founder/CEO who, as a former Brand Manager himself, will likely have strong  opinions on the creative output.

Finally, the recent appointment of Heidi Cooley (CMO of Crocs) to the board creates a "Shadow CMO" dynamic. Her presence sets the bar for "brand excellence" at the level of a global cultural icon. If you cannot deliver Crocs-level cultural relevance on a fraction of the budget - while dodging tariffs, fighting Breville, and managing a depleted 2022 war chest - the board will know immediately.

You’re being asked to turn a Kickstarter-fueled, profitable-on-paper hardware startup into a mainstream kitchen platform after 3 years of soft consumer spend and no public signs of fresh capital, while the Series B clock ticks loudly in the background. If you love building both the airplane and the runway at the same time, buckle up; if you want a fully fueled jet, taxi elsewhere.

And if you're currently on the hunt, here are a few more roles that are worth a closer look:

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