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A Head of Growth is a senior leadership role responsible for driving measurable, experiment-led growth across the full customer lifecycle – acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. The role sits at the intersection of marketing, product, and data, and typically reports directly to the CEO or CPO.
Hiring a Head of Growth can transform a business by introducing a structured, data-driven approach to scaling. Unlike a traditional marketing leader, a Head of Growth prioritises speed of learning over volume of output – running rapid experiments, measuring what works, and doubling down on the highest-impact levers.
Every modern business needs a Head of Growth because this person is crucial in driving customer acquisition, activating customers, retaining them, and maximising the business’ revenue.
Stuart Brameld, Growth Method CEO and Growth Advisor
What does a Head of Growth do?
A Head of Growth owns the full AARRR funnel – Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue – and is accountable for hitting company-level growth targets. Day-to-day the role combines strategic leadership with hands-on analytical work: identifying growth opportunities, designing experiments, interpreting results, and translating insights into product and marketing decisions.
Core responsibilities of a Head of Growth include:
- Defining and owning the company growth strategy and roadmap
- Running a structured experiment programme (typically 2-4 experiments per week at scale)
- Owning key growth metrics: new user acquisition, activation rate, retention rate, and revenue growth
- Collaborating with product, engineering, and marketing to ship growth initiatives
- Prioritising the growth backlog using frameworks such as ICE or RICE
- Building and managing a growth team structure of specialists and generalists
- Reporting growth performance and experiment learnings to the executive team
- Identifying and sizing new growth channels and market opportunities
- Establishing a culture of experimentation across the organisation
- Owning the growth marketing strategy and aligning it to business objectives
Growth and growth marketing on the rise
According to Google Trends, worldwide interest in growth marketing has increased substantially over the last 15 years, and continues to grow.
The LinkedIn 2023 Jobs on the Rise list examined millions of jobs started by LinkedIn members across the last 5 years. Growth and growth marketing-related roles were consistently placed in the top 10 fastest-growing job titles worldwide, with 2 growth-related roles in the UK’s top 10 fastest-growing jobs.
Head of Growth job description
The following is a ready-to-use Head of Growth job description template. Adapt it to reflect your company stage, sector, and reporting structure.
Role summary
We are looking for a Head of Growth to own our growth strategy and execution across the full customer lifecycle. You will define how we acquire, activate, and retain customers, build and lead a high-performance growth team, and establish a rigorous experiment-led culture. You will report to the CEO / CPO and work closely with product, engineering, and marketing.
Key responsibilities
- Own and execute the company growth strategy across acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue
- Define, track, and report on the company’s key growth metrics and OKRs
- Build and prioritise the growth experiment roadmap; run 2-4 experiments per sprint
- Lead a cross-functional growth team including growth engineers, growth marketing managers, and analysts
- Identify new growth channels and validate them through structured testing
- Work with product and engineering to build growth-focused product features and loops
- Present experiment results and growth performance to the executive team and board
Required skills and experience
- 5+ years in a growth, product marketing, or performance marketing role
- Proven track record of driving measurable growth at a B2B or B2C company
- Strong analytical skills: comfortable with SQL, cohort analysis, and A/B test interpretation
- Experience with growth frameworks (AARRR, ICE, RICE, North Star Metric)
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence without direct authority
- Hands-on experience with experimentation tools and marketing analytics platforms
- Excellent communication skills; able to translate data into clear business decisions
Preferred background
- Experience at a high-growth SaaS or marketplace company
- Familiarity with product-led growth (PLG) motions
- Background spanning both marketing and product disciplines
- Experience building or scaling a growth marketing specialist function
Seniority levels
| Level | Typical scope | Years experience |
|---|---|---|
| Head of Growth | Owns growth strategy; leads a small team | 5-8 years |
| Senior Head of Growth | Multi-product or multi-market scope | 7-10 years |
| Director of Growth | Manages managers; broader P&L accountability | 9-13 years |
| VP of Growth | Executive seat; company-level growth ownership | 12+ years |
KPIs the role is typically measured against
- Monthly Active Users (MAU) or Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) growth rate
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and CAC payback period
- Activation rate (users reaching the “aha moment”)
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR) or churn rate
- Experiment velocity (number of tests run per quarter)
- Contribution to company North Star Metric
Head of Growth vs. CMO vs. VP Marketing vs. Growth Engineer
| Role | Primary focus | Typical scope | Owns experimentation? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Head of Growth | Measurable growth across AARRR funnel | Growth strategy, team, and roadmap | Yes – central to the role |
| CMO | Brand, demand generation, and marketing communications | Full marketing function; often includes comms, PR, events | Sometimes – varies by company |
| VP Marketing | Marketing execution and pipeline contribution | Demand gen, content, campaigns, and marketing ops | Rarely the primary owner |
| Growth Engineer | Technical growth implementation | Builds growth features, tooling, and data pipelines | Executes experiments; rarely designs strategy |
The Head of Growth and CMO roles are often confused. The key distinction is orientation: a CMO typically manages brand and marketing output, whereas a Head of Growth is fundamentally accountable for measurable growth metrics and owns the experimentation programme as a core function.
What makes a great growth hire?
A modern growth hire requires a wide base level of knowledge, along with deep expertise in one or two areas well-suited to your business.
The T-Shaped Marketer framework popularised by Buffer illustrates the concept well.
The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own.
A strong grounding in how buyers actually make decisions is also essential. Heads of Growth who understand the B2B buying journey – including the growing preference for rep-free evaluation and the non-linear nature of B2B purchases – are better positioned to design programmes that meet buyers where they are.
Required skills for a Head of Growth
Here are some of the core traits and skills of a good Head of Growth.
- Strategic thinking: Great Heads of Growth think in systems, not campaigns – always working backwards from the growth metric to the lever.
- Strong analytical skills: The ability to analyse data correctly and use the findings to make informed decisions is non-negotiable.
- Creativity: Finding unconventional growth channels and novel experiment ideas requires genuine creative thinking alongside rigorous analysis.
- Leadership: Driving growth demands the ability to lead cross-functional teams, align stakeholders, and build psychological safety for experimentation.
- Customer focus: A customer-centric approach is key to understanding what drives acquisition, activation, and retention at each stage.
- Adaptability: The market is dynamic; Heads of Growth must be comfortable with ambiguity and able to pivot rapidly when data demands it.
- Experimentation mindset: Comfort with failure as a learning mechanism – and the discipline to run clean, interpretable experiments – separates great growth leaders from average ones.
Head of Growth salary
Depending on experience and location, salaries for a Head of Growth are typically in the ranges below. For current live roles, view Head of Growth job postings on LinkedIn.
| Level | UK (per year) | US (per year) |
|---|---|---|
| Head of Growth | £65k - £85k (avg £75k) | $110k - $150k (avg $130k) |
| Senior / Director | £90k - £130k | $155k - $195k |
| VP of Growth | £120k - £160k+ | $185k - $240k+ |
Salaries vary significantly by company stage (early-stage vs. scale-up vs. enterprise), sector (SaaS commands a premium), and location within each market (London and San Francisco command the highest rates domestically).
How to hire a Head of Growth
Hiring the wrong person for a growth leadership role is expensive. Here is what to look for – and watch out for.
- Look for evidence of experiment velocity, not just big wins. Ask how many experiments they ran per quarter, not just which ones succeeded. High-output experimentation habits are more predictive of success than headline results.
- Probe for cross-functional influence. The best Heads of Growth get things shipped without direct authority. Ask for examples of aligning product and engineering around a growth initiative.
- Test analytical depth, not just familiarity. Ask candidates to walk through a real experiment result, including how they handled statistical significance, sample size, and confounding variables.
- Check for strategic range. Can they articulate a growth model for your business – not just a list of tactics? A strong candidate will diagnose your funnel and propose a prioritised hypothesis within 30 minutes of understanding your metrics.
- Avoid the “growth hacker” anti-pattern. Candidates who lead with viral loops and referral schemes without understanding your activation and retention first are optimising the wrong end of the funnel.
- Assess cultural fit with experimentation failure. Growth teams run experiments that fail regularly. If a candidate cannot articulate what they learned from a failed experiment without defensiveness, that is a red flag.
- Interview question to use: “Walk me through the growth model of a company you have worked at – what was the North Star Metric, what were the leading indicators, and what lever did you focus on first and why?”
About Growth Method
Growth Method is the agentic marketing platform designed for experiment-led, data-driven marketing teams. It helps you plan your growth strategy, ship campaigns, and learn what works – all in one place.
Learn more on our homepage, connect with Stuart on LinkedIn or schedule a call today.