Geography & remote
Major tech metros and on-site roles pay a premium; distributed teams compress the range but widen the pool.
2026 · US salary benchmarks
2026 Salary Benchmarks for Modern GTM & Technical Talent
Real US pay ranges for the roles we recruit — Marketo and Adobe platform specialists, marketing operations, enterprise AEs, GTM Engineers, AEO/GEO and Databricks — blended from public salary data and updated for 2026.
How to read these
Ranges, not quotes.
These are US figures blended from public salary aggregators for 2025–2026. Treat them as a market map: geography, company stage, equity, and — above all — whether a candidate can prove real work move the number more than the title does. For role definitions, interview questions, and job-description templates, see the free guides linked below.
Adobe & martech platform roles
| Role | US average base | Entry | Experienced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketo Engage specialist / administrator | $94k | $80k | $151k |
| Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) developer | $93k | $60k | $137k |
| Adobe Analytics specialist | $121k | $102k | $170k |
| Adobe Workfront specialist | $132k | $102k | $178k |
US base salary, excluding bonus and equity. Sources: talent.com title-level data, accessed September 2026. Marketo corroborated by Payscale ($95,000 average base across 415 reports, updated February 2026); AEM by Payscale’s AEM Developer profile ($91,000).
Why Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Target are not listed: neither has reliable public salary data at the title level. Aggregators match those strings against unrelated postings — “Adobe Target” in particular collides with retail listings and returns a figure under $36k, which is not a real market rate for the role. Rather than publish a number we cannot stand behind, we quote those two on request; in practice they track the Adobe Analytics band and above.
Marketing operations
| Role | US average base | Entry | Experienced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing Operations Manager | $100k | $62k | $131k |
Source: talent.com, accessed September 2026. The band widens sharply with platform depth — a manager who owns a Marketo or Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance end to end sits near the top of it.
Enterprise account executive
Quoted as on-target earnings, not base. AE roles are commission-driven, and a base-salary figure for this seat is misleading — public aggregators report an “enterprise account executive” average near $88k, which is base-diluted and well below what it actually costs to hire one.
| Benchmark | 2026 figure |
|---|---|
| Median AE on-target earnings (OTE) | $200k (up from $190k in 2024) |
| Median annual quota | $960k |
| Quota-to-OTE ratio | 4.6× (up from 4.2× in 2024) |
| Ramp to full productivity | 6.2 months — the highest on record |
| Reps hitting annual quota | 48% (down from 51% in 2024) |
| Experience required at hire | 3.7 years (up from 2.7 in 2022) |
Source: The Bridge Group, 2026 AE Models, Motions & Metrics — 158 B2B companies, published June 2026. Enterprise roles with longer cycles and larger deal sizes sit above these medians, which are blended across segments. More context in our 2026 GTM hiring benchmarks.
GTM Engineer
| Level | Typical base (US) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Junior / GTM Engineer I | $95k–$125k | Often Clay-native operators; meaningful equity at early-stage startups |
| Mid / GTM Engineer II | $125k–$160k | Owns the stack, writes Python/SQL — where most GTM Engineers sit today |
| Senior / Lead | $160k–$210k+ | Architects systems; the jump from junior can roughly 2× total comp |
Median ≈ $127.5k across a 1,000-job analysis (Oct 2025). Engineers who write code out-earn tool-only operators. Sources: Apollo, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Bloomberry, GTME Pulse. Accessed June 2026.
AEO / GEO (AI-search) roles
| Role | Typical base (US) |
|---|---|
| Technical SEO / AEO Engineer | $85k–$130k |
| AI Content Strategist | $85k–$145k (senior to ~$158k) |
| GEO / AI Search Strategist | $110k–$160k |
| AEO/GEO Manager / Head of Organic | $150k–$220k+ (Director of SEO median ~$172k; Head of SEO median ~$182k, top earners $300k+) |
AI-search skills carry a clear premium — director-tier organic-search pay grew ~11% YoY. Sources: First Page Sage, tryanalyze.ai, Built In, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Robert Half. Accessed June 2026.
Databricks talent
Permanent (base salary)
| Level | Typical base (US) |
|---|---|
| Databricks Data Engineer | $115k–$162k (avg ~$130k) |
| Senior Data / Platform Engineer | $150k–$190k |
| Solutions / Data Architect, Practice Lead | $185k–$240k+ |
Contract (consulting delivery)
| Level | US hourly | Approx. day rate |
|---|---|---|
| Mid | $80–$120/hr | ~$650–$950 |
| Senior / Architect | $120–$200+/hr | ~$1,000–$1,600 |
Note: Databricks Inc.’s own staff comp (e.g. Levels.fyi shows Solution Architects at the vendor at $231k–$522k) is a vendor-employer reference, not the market rate for a consultant delivering on the platform. Sources: ZipRecruiter, Flexiple, Arc.dev, Toptal, contractrates.fyi. Accessed June 2026.
What moves the range
Why two hires with the same title get paid differently
Company stage
Early-stage startups trade base for meaningful equity ($110–140k + equity is common); growth-stage and public firms pay higher base.
Depth & proof
Across every role, candidates who can point to real systems built or projects delivered — not just tools used — sit at the top of the band.
Go deeper
Free hiring guides for each role
Hiring cost & timing
What buyers ask us most
What is the average salary for a Marketo administrator?
About $94,000–$95,000 a year in the US for a Marketo Engage specialist or administrator. Two independent sources land within $1k of each other: talent.com puts the average at $94,376 across 216 reported salaries, and Payscale at $95,000 across 415. Entry-level roles start near $80,000; experienced Marketo hires reach roughly $151,000. Contract and consultant rates run higher.
What does it cost to hire an enterprise account executive in 2026?
Budget against on-target earnings, not base salary. Median AE OTE is $200,000 in 2026, up from $190,000 in 2024, split against a median annual quota of $960,000 — a quota-to-OTE ratio of 4.6×. Enterprise roles with longer cycles and larger deal sizes sit above that median. Add ramp: the typical AE takes 6.2 months to reach full productivity, so the first-year cost of the seat is real even before the quota is carried.
How long does it take to hire a marketing operations manager?
Plan for roughly 36–48 days from open req to signed offer, which is the median US time-to-fill. Marketing operations tends to sit at the longer end because the role screens for a specific platform stack — Marketo, HubSpot or Salesforce Marketing Cloud — on top of the general loop. The delay itself is the risk: 42% of candidates walk away specifically because scheduling dragged.
How much does an Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) developer make?
About $91,000–$93,000 a year in the US. talent.com reports an average of $93,284 and Payscale $91,000 for AEM developers. The band is wide — roughly $60,000 at entry to $137,000 for experienced developers — because AEM covers everything from template work to full platform architecture.
What should I look for when hiring an Adobe Analytics specialist?
Proof of implementation, not tool familiarity. The strongest candidates can speak concretely about report suites, eVars, props and events, Analysis Workspace, classifications and data feeds — and can describe a tagging implementation they debugged end to end in Adobe Launch/Tags with a real data layer. Pay tracks that depth: the US average is about $121,000, rising to roughly $170,000 for experienced specialists.
Do these figures include bonus, commission or equity?
No. Every figure on this page is base salary except the account executive section, which is quoted as on-target earnings because AE roles are commission-driven and a base number would be misleading. Equity is excluded throughout — at early-stage companies it can be a large share of real compensation.
Benchmarking a comp band or a new hire?
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