Career path

Demand Generation Manager to Head of Growth

What carries over, what to build, and where to start.

Common in Demand Generation Manager work

Often asked for in Head of Growth roles

This is what is typical, not a read of you. Tap a skill to move it to the other side.

Drawn from live Head of Growth postings. Demand Generation Manager had too few live postings, so its skills reflect what the role typically involves.

How your skills connect

What is typical in Demand Generation Manager on the left, what Head of Growth asks for on the right.

  • Common in your role
  • Related
  • New territory
  • Extra
  • Judgement call

Hover or focus a skill to see how it connects.

SEO & Organic Traffic Strategy
Funnel Analytics & Reporting
Conversion Rate Optimization…
Data-Driven Forecasting
Marketing & Sales Alignment
Lead Generation & Nurturing
Marketing Automation Strategy
Customer Journey Mapping
A/B Testing & Experimentation
Customer Acquisition Cost (CA…
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Paid Search & Social Campaign…
Multi-Touch Attribution
Budget Management
Content Syndication Strategy
Data analysis70%
Stakeholder management31%
Growth marketing30%
Strategic planning26%
Growth strategy26%
Project management22%
SQL20%
Cross-functional leadership20%
Demand Generation17%
Marketing automation17%
Cross-functional collaboration17%
A/B testing17%
Performance marketing17%
Budget management17%
Communication17%
Lifecycle marketing15%
Product management15%
Experimentation15%
Business development15%
Revenue growth13%

Skill by skill

  • Data analysisClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Data-Driven Forecastingrelated
    • A/B Testing & Experimentationrelated
  • Stakeholder managementClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Marketing & Sales AlignmentAligning marketing and sales teams requires managing expectations and getting buy-in from key business leaders.
  • Growth marketingClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Optimizationrelated
    • Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)related
  • Strategic planningClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Data-Driven ForecastingForecasting revenue and demand informs long-term capacity planning and corporate strategic decisions.
  • Growth strategyClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • SEO & Organic Traffic Strategyrelated
    • Marketing Automation Strategyrelated
  • Project managementClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Account-Based Marketing (ABM)ABM requires executing structured, multi-channel campaigns with tight timelines and coordinated resource allocation.
  • SQLClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Funnel Analytics & ReportingAnalyzing conversion funnels builds the foundational logic for querying and structuring database tables.
  • Cross-functional leadershipClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Marketing & Sales Alignmentrelated
  • Demand GenerationCommon in your current role.
    Builds on
    • Lead Generation & Nurturingclosely related
    • Marketing Automation Strategyrelated
  • Marketing automationCommon in your current role.
    Builds on
    • Marketing Automation Strategyclosely related
    • Lead Generation & Nurturingrelated
  • Cross-functional collaborationClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Marketing & Sales Alignmentrelated
  • A/B testingCommon in your current role.
    Builds on
    • A/B Testing & Experimentationclosely related
    • Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)related
  • Performance marketingClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Paid Search & Social Campaign Managementrelated
    • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Optimizationrelated
  • Budget managementCommon in your current role.
    Builds on
    • Budget Managementclosely related
  • CommunicationClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Marketing & Sales AlignmentBridging the gap between distinct departments demands clear, persuasive, and ongoing communication.
  • Lifecycle marketingClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Marketing Automation Strategyrelated
  • Product managementNew territory for many people making this move.

    Nothing typical in your role links to this, which is normal for something new.

  • ExperimentationClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • A/B Testing & Experimentationrelated
  • Business developmentClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Account-Based Marketing (ABM)ABM involves identifying and strategically nurturing high-value accounts, which directly mirrors business development.
  • Revenue growthClose to things people in your role do.
    Builds on
    • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Optimizationrelated
    • Data-Driven Forecastingrelated

Where your experience likely helps

  • Demand Generation

    Your experience driving lead acquisition forms the basis of the growth engine, allowing you to scale initial attraction programs with ease.

  • A/B testing

    You can apply systematic experimentation to fine-tune conversion rates and landing page experiences across the entire user journey.

  • Budget management

    Allocating campaign spend effectively helps you optimize customer acquisition costs and prioritize high-value channels as a growth leader.

  • Lifecycle marketing

    Understanding how to guide customers through nurture sequences helps you tackle broader activation and retention challenges in the wider growth funnel.

What may be new

  • Product management

    This area involves optimizing user onboarding flows and collaborate on product-led growth initiatives directly inside the platform.

  • Cross-functional leadership

    Growth leaders regularly align product, sales, marketing, and data teams around shared revenue objectives rather than working in silos.

  • SQL

    This querying tool allows you to pull direct database insights independently to analyze customer cohorts and drop-off points.

How the day-to-day differs

While demand generation managers often focus on planning and executing campaigns to fill the sales pipeline, a growth leader operates across the entire funnel. Daily, you might collaborate with product teams on sign-up flows, review analytics to find activation barriers, or coordinate with sales stakeholders. You will balance broad strategic alignment with rapid, data-led experimentation to optimize customer journeys from acquisition to retention.

Say it in their language

The same experience, worded for Head of Growth roles.

  • What you did

    Managed automated marketing flows to nurture incoming leads.

    How to say it

    Developed lifecycle marketing strategies to optimize user activation pathways.

  • What you did

    Ran tests on landing pages to increase email sign-ups.

    How to say it

    Designed experimentation frameworks to drive conversion rate optimization across the user journey.

  • What you did

    Aligned sales and marketing teams on lead definitions and handoff.

    How to say it

    Led cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management to build a repeatable revenue engine.

Skills employers ask for most

  • Data analysis
  • Stakeholder management
  • Growth marketing
  • Strategic planning
  • Growth strategy
  • Project management
  • SQL
  • Cross-functional leadership
  • Demand Generation
  • Marketing automation
  • Cross-functional collaboration
  • A/B testing

Pay and the market

Typical pay for Head of Growth$155.2KMost postings fall between $103.5K and $184.1K.
Live openings we found54
Who they hire
  • Entry (0-2 yrs)4%
  • Mid (2-5 yrs)30%
  • Senior (5-10 yrs)54%
  • Lead (10+ yrs)13%

Based on postings that list yearly pay in USD.

Stepping stones

Roles that sit between Demand Generation Manager and Head of Growth. Take as many or as few as suit you.

  1. Where you areDemand Generation Manager
  2. Option 1Growth Marketing Manager

    Focuses on full-funnel campaigns, connecting acquisition efforts to deeper user lifecycle actions.

    • Growth marketing
    • Performance marketing
    • Lifecycle marketing
  3. Option 2Senior Growth Manager

    Bridges the gap between traditional marketing and product teams by managing broader customer activation programs.

    • Cross-functional collaboration
    • Strategic planning
    • Stakeholder management
  4. Where you are headingHead of Growth

Where to start

In a sensible order. Go at your own pace.

  1. 01
    Start hereSQL

    This helps you extract and analyze data directly to identify customer drop-offs without waiting on database requests.

    A way to begin: Write queries on an open-source sample database to practice filtering and joining user activity tables.

  2. 02
    ThenProduct management

    Understanding user flows within the application is useful for designing product-led growth experiments.

    A way to begin: Shadow a colleague in a product role or read public case studies detailing self-serve signup flows.

  3. 03
    After thatCross-functional leadership

    Growth initiatives depend on securing agreement from product, sales, and engineering departments.

    A way to begin: Volunteer to coordinate a joint planning session between your current marketing team and sales representatives.

  4. 04
    LaterStrategic planning

    You will need to construct long-term growth roadmaps that support high-level business goals.

    A way to begin: Draft a mock growth strategy for a business looking to enter a different target customer segment.

Open Head of Growth roles

Live postings you could look at today.

  • Growth Marketing Manager (B2B SaaS)Veem · Ontario, Canada · Remote
  • Growth Product ManagerRebrandly · United States · Remote$150K – $180K/yr
  • Growth Product ManagerDistroKid · Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy · Remote$70K – $170K/yr
  • Managing Director, GrowthAspen Standard Wealth · Braintree, Massachusetts, United States · On-site
  • Growth Marketing ManagerWagepoint · Calgary, Alberta, Canada · RemoteCA$115K – CA$125K/yr
  • Growth ManagerAllica Bank · London, England, United Kingdom · Hybrid

In short

If you have spent time managing demand generation campaigns, you may already have a strong grasp of driving customer interest, executing targeted marketing programs, and managing budgets. Your experience building pipelines translates naturally to growth-focused environments.

Stepping into a leadership position like this means shifting your focus to the entire customer lifecycle. Instead of just acquiring leads, you will guide strategic planning, work closely with product teams, and lead cross-functional efforts to unlock sustainable revenue growth.

Questions people ask

Do I need a strong technical background in coding to become a Head of Growth?

You do not need to write production code, but developing basic query skills and a clear understanding of product architecture can help you communicate with engineers.

How does this role differ from a typical Demand Generation role?

While demand generation mostly focuses on top-of-funnel acquisition, growth leadership extends to post-signup activation, retention, and referral loops.

Will I be responsible for managing product roadmaps?

You will generally collaborate with product teams to influence the roadmap for growth-related features, rather than managing core product utility.

How this page was built

  • 54 live postings for Head of Growth. Each skill’s demand is the share of these postings that ask for it.
  • Demand Generation Manager: no matching live postings. Too few postings, so this side’s skills are a model’s estimate of what the role relies on.
  • Meaning-based matching. Skills are compared by meaning using text embeddings: near-synonyms count as covered, clearly related skills as partial.
  • 6 inferred links. Where embeddings found no direct match, a model proposed a transfer with its reasoning. These count for less and are drawn dashed.