The surge in marketing hiring continues!

This week, there are 38,345 live marketing roles across the U.S., reflecting a steady 3.7% increase YoY. For the senior marketing professionals, the numbers look even more promising: 4,979 open roles at Director level and above, up 12.3% YoY, a clear signal that while companies may be cautious, they’re still investing in experience and leadership.

Salary transparency is improving, too. 60.1% of postings now include pay information. The median salary across all marketing roles stands at $89,003. For senior positions, that figure rises to $155,002.

Median Salary By Seniority

Median Salary of Senior Marketing Jobs at Top Hiring Cities:

In this edition, we’re tracking 4 roles that expose where the market is really headed. Salesforce’s high‑wire attempt to sell “agentic” abstraction to non‑technical buyers without a search‑firm safety net; Squarespace’s private‑equity push for international rigor amid 22% marketing attrition; Savage X Fenty’s mysterious reduction from CMO to SVP as founder‑led brands demand execution over stewardship; and Li & Fung’s struggle to turn a supply‑chain ghost into a growth narrative.

Each reveals what boards now value, what they’re unwilling to pay for, and the specific vocabulary that wins the room in 2026. If you’re interviewing, hiring, or just job curious…consider this your confidential briefing.

*As a quick reminder, we are not the employer, nor are we agents of the employer. Any attrition data quoted is estimated and based on public LinkedIn data. Legal disclaimer here.

Salesforce is attempting a high-wire act in category design without the aid of an executive search firm. They are currently fighting to retire the "static journey" narrative in favor of an "agentic era," a pivot that charges this CMO with turning deep technical abstraction; AI reasoning and Data Cloud, into simple business value for a non-technical audience. The salary band, topping out at a base of $471,000, signals a heavyweight mandate, but the real tell is the requirement for "Marketer-to-Marketer" Fluency. They don’t want a salesperson; they want a credible thought partner who understands the high-pressure seat of their peers.

However, the strategy feels more engineered than inevitable. While the monetization logic is quite sharp - upselling AI features into a massive installed base…the narrative architecture is cluttered. Layers like Einstein, Data Cloud, and Agentforce force CMOs to decode the brand rather than grasp it instantly. Salesforce currently sits at a "B-" grade for strategic clarity; it has a durable enterprise moat but lacks the cultural momentum seen with rivals like Microsoft (though everyone I talk to seems to hate on the new “Clippy” AKA CoPilot).

There is also a distinct wobble in the workforce messaging that the incoming leader must navigate. In 2024, leadership suggested AI would reduce hiring needs, only to pivot back toward an "augmentation" message within a year. This creates whiplash for enterprise buyers who might equate workforce stability with product trust. For a company selling "Trusted AI," implying your own people are replaceable is the worst type of communication failure.

Financially, Salesforce is a victim of the 2026 "SaaSpocalypse". Despite beating earnings and growing revenue by 12%, the stock is down roughly 30% YTD as investors price in structural risk from AI agents like Anthropic. The market is treating the stock as a risk bet rather than a value play, meaning the narrative battle is now just as critical as the product battle.

If Taligence were running this search, we’d be poaching from the big targets at Adobe Experience Cloud, Hubspot, or Canva, operators who have survived the data-into-creative-aspiration struggle. A Salesforce CMO coming from a pure RPA background risks being branded a "wartime general" of a legacy era, but I’d still tap talent at UIPath and Automation Anywhere.

To win this interview, ditch the "paradigm shift" talk. Show up with quantified customer ROI case studies, not vibes, and explain how you will move past "digital labor" abstraction into campaign velocity and pipeline lift. Ask directly whether "AI agents" are a genuine revenue engine or just a costume designed to protect pricing power. And given that there’s no information on the team size, budget, or even reporting line in the JD, asking “Who is my boss?” is a fair question.

Credit to them for making the logo GIF easy to find, although it does make me feel a bit dizzy.

When I see a cross-market role like this, I always want to know - how global are they already? Squarespace serves customers in over 200 countries, but the geographic revenue mix reveals a heavy reliance on the domestic market. Roughly 71% of revenue still originates in the United States, with international traction largely confined to English-speaking hubs like the UK, Australia, and Canada. In major non-English markets such as Germany and France, the site counts remain in the low five figures, indicating that the business has yet to achieve dominant local status outside the Anglosphere. This VP seat is charged with breaking a multi-year stagnation where international bookings have hovered around 30% of the total revenue base.

The internal environment for this $420,000 base role indicates significant movement within the 110-person marketing department. Forensic LinkedIn data indicate an attrition rate of ~22% (high in this climate of job-hugging), with talent choosing high-growth firms such as Notion, OpenAI, and Stripe. This churn coincides with the company’s $7.2 billion take-private acquisition by Permira, a transition that typically pivots a culture from public brand narrative toward aggressive margin and growth targets. Current employee reviews describe a talent pool that has largely matured within the company, which may present a challenge for an incoming leader tasked with implementing the "outside-in" specialized thinking required for global expansion.

Strategic success in this position involves reporting to Josh Groth, the SVP of Growth, whose professional pedigree includes Meta, Square, and Hims. Groth operates as a performance heavyweight who prioritizes LTV:CAC modeling and conversion lift studies.

I’ve watched his Brand Innovators video interview. If you’re heading into a conversation with him, go in thinking systems, not channels. He doesn’t want to hear nostalgia about pre-iOS14 performance metrics or tactical chatter about bid tweaks. He’s operating from the belief that privacy shifts are permanent, auction dynamics are structurally fragile, and creative is now the highest-leverage growth variable left.

Expect questions that probe how you balance portfolio risk, how you think about triangulated measurement beyond platform dashboards, and how you’d turn creative into a disciplined, iterative testing engine rather than a one-off campaign bet. He values marketers who can connect data, psychology, product insight and execution without hiding in silos. Show him you think in compounding gains, not hero moments, and that you’re comfortable operating in ambiguity while still driving accountable growth.

The mandate requires a technical operator capable of building an international marketing system anchored in Media Mix Modeling (MMM) and Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA). A candidate from the "Math Men and Women" circles, specifically those who have managed hyper-local GTM plans for firms like Revolut, Wise, or Spotify - would match the required rigor for this expansion play. Agency talent should pay attention - Agencies have global footprints and smart talent who can execute international unlocks.

Interviewing for this mandate requires a 90-day plan centered on product-market fit tests and local payment compliance in markets such as Germany and Spain. The central question remains whether the international revenue target is a visionary objective or a hard board-level metric for the 2026 fiscal year.

The transition at Savage X Fenty from a Nike-pedigree CMO to an SVP of Brand Marketing is a textbook case of the executing strategist model currently reshaping the 2026 job market as referenced in my recent Forbes article.

In July 2024, the brand appointed Vanessa Wallace, a 19-year Jordan Brand veteran, as Chief Marketing Officer to oversee a vast remit of global communications and media. However, Wallace’s (assumed) departure after roughly a year, and the subsequent decision to fill the gap with an SVP title reporting directly to CEO Hillary Super. signals a strategic pivot away from executive stewardship toward high-density execution. This role confirms the inversion of the ladder thesis, where boards are seeking judgment and immediate operational impact. The job description’s explicit warning that this is not a role for leaders who prefer rigid processes or staying removed from execution reflects the collapse of tolerance for learning curves in 2026.

The internal climate suggests this reset is occurring amid significant organizational churn. Forensic Linkedin data reveals a ~44% attrition rate within the marketing department. Talent is migrating to high-growth, culture-forward companies like Lululemon and Waymo, as well as to creator agencies like LOI. Curiously, while Wallace was publicly announced as CMO in mid-2024, her public LinkedIn profile history currently shows her Nike tenure ending in June 2024 with no mention of the Savage X Fenty chapter outside of her headline. This adds a layer of mystery to a marketing leadership seat that sits at the intersection of confidence and culture, but currently operates in a state of flux.

Despite the internal movement, Savage X Fenty remains a cultural powerhouse. The brand nearly doubled its ad awareness scores during the 2026 Valentine’s Day campaign, proving that Rihanna’s star-power engine still drives massive earned media momentum. While the brand excels at brand heat, it lacks the data-driven personalization and loyalty maturity of competitors like Aerie or Victoria’s Secret.

This is a revenue cycle hire where the CEO is looking for an operator who can close the gap between a high-level creative plan and a retail-ready pipeline. The ideal candidate likely comes from Skims or Rare Beauty, leaders who have already mastered the art of managing a founder-led cult brand while navigating the lean, fast-moving environment of a micro-team.

To win this interview, ditch the 100-day listening tour and show up with a sharp creative POV. Hillary Super needs an executing strategist who can stabilize the remaining team while simultaneously originating celebrity collaborations that continue to drive cultural cachet. Address the CMO-to-SVP title shift directly by framing yourself as the leader who can both decide and deliver, proving you are the high-impact senior hand required for a micro-team era.

The Vice President of Marketing at Li & Fung enters an organization that operates as a global giant in sourcing but remains a ghost within the Western business narrative. While the company manages end-to-end supply chain orchestration for the world’s largest brands, its marketing in the U.S. and Europe has historically stalled at operational descriptions rather than articulating strategic value. The incoming leader is tasked with a significant rebranding effort to move Li & Fung from a back-office sourcing intermediary to a C-suite growth accelerator.

The compensation for this role, with a base salary ranging from $200,000 to $250,000, is notably conservative for a fifteen-year veteran expected to oversee two continents and drive a digital-first transformation all at 20,000ft. This entry point reflects a company that continues to view marketing through a tactical lens rather than a strategic one. Despite its massive scale, Li & Fung is not doing a brilliant job of building brand awareness in the U.S. and Europe, where it is frequently perceived as an invisible partner. Current marketing efforts resonate with procurement teams but fail to move the needle with brand buyers or the business press because the story stops at efficiency rather than expanding into the strategic language of risk and revenue continuity. Public presence is dominated by corporate site content and press releases rather than continual narrative propulsion or heavyweight industry research.

This Vice President must navigate a complex, culturally diverse global marketing organization while maintaining an international travel schedule of 30% to 50%. Success metrics are strictly quantitative, focusing on pipeline contribution, customer acquisition costs, and lifetime value. The mandate involves reframing the supply chain of the future into a revenue safeguard and a primary enabler of sustainability. Beyond B2B operations, the role includes leading a licensing business, requiring the hire to serve as a regional brand steward for specific consumer products. The hire must also champion innovation across a siloed matrix of product, sales, and supply chain leadership to ensure regional teams do not duplicate efforts. In our view, it’s too much for a single person.

The company is seeking an operator who can close the gap between a high-level creative plan and a retail-ready pipeline. Ideal candidates are likely operating as marketing leads within digital logistics platforms or B2B powerhouses, fluent in outcome-based marketing. An effective interview strategy should avoid abstract discussions of brand identity and focus instead on pipeline architecture. A 90-day plan should involve auditing the global marketing technology stack to create a single source of truth for lead attribution. This approach addresses the salary cap by focusing on the movement-maker upside and the opportunity to integrate artificial intelligence into a multi-billion dollar supply chain.