Marketing Lead (Founding Marketing Hire)

Marketing Lead (Founding Marketing Hire)

Remote — US / Canada / Europe | Our client is a Swiss deep-tech startup

About the company

Our client is a Swiss deep-tech startup that owns the full stack — from thermal-camera hardware to AI-powered monitoring software — built to prevent fires and enable predictive maintenance on industrial sites.

Today the platform protects 50+ facilities across 9 countries, spanning wood products, chemical processing, waste recycling, and oil & gas — and the company hasn't lost a single customer in 3 years.

Despite a lean team (11–50 people), the company already runs a mature GTM tech stack with serious investment in AI tooling — unusual for a startup this size. The company is now building its US sales team, and this first marketing hire will build the inbound engine that fuels it.

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The role

This is the company's first marketing hire. You'll build the function from zero — no existing team, no inherited processes, and real ownership over proposing your own budget and strategy.

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What you'll do

• Build and run inbound lead generation from scratch: SEO, Google Ads, email campaigns, and presence at industry trade shows;
• Execute the tactical work yourself — this is a hands-on role, not managing agencies;
• Work closely with the sales team to drive quality pipeline and a clear lead handoff process;
• Propose and defend the company's first marketing budget;
• Lay the foundation for a marketing function that will scale as the team grows.

Who we're looking for

We're looking for a marketer who's done this before — someone who was the first or one of the first marketing hires at a startup and built the function themselves.

Must-have

• Track record of building a marketing function from scratch at a startup/scale-up — you were the one doing the work, not managing a large team;
• Hands-on execution experience: SEO, paid media (Google Ads), email marketing, event/trade show work;
• Comfort operating with limited resources and high ambiguity, typical of early-stage companies.

Strong plus

• Experience in deep-tech, hardware, robotics, or industrial B2B — you know how to speak to technical and plant-floor buyers;
• A background in sales before moving into marketing — you naturally think in terms of pipeline, not just reach;
• Experience transforming a GTM motion (e.g., a shift to ABM);
• German language skills and/or experience in the DACH/Swiss market;
• Concrete, personally-owned metrics from past roles — pipeline growth, MQLs/SQLs, conversion rates — that you drove yourself, not results attributed to a team.

The offer

• Format: fully remote — US, Canada, or Europe (CET overlap is a plus);
• Compensation: competitive package + performance-based variable tied to pipeline and ARR milestones;
• Ownership: report directly to the CEO and own AVIAN’s marketing engine end-to-end;
• Resources: budget authority for tools, experiments, events, and selective external support;
• Setup: high-trust, international environment with the freedom to build a lean, AI-forward marketing function your way.

Why this role

• You’re not inheriting someone else’s playbook — you’ll build the marketing function from zero at a company with proven product-market fit, real customers, and commercial traction;
• This is a genuinely hands-on builder role: strategy and execution stay close, without layers of management or a large team to coordinate;
• AI isn’t being added to an old marketing organization — you’ll have the mandate to design the function AI-first from day one, automating work that would traditionally require a small team;
• Your work connects directly to revenue: build pipeline, strengthen brand authority, and create repeatable growth systems alongside the expanding US sales team;
• You’ll have direct access to the CEO, budget authority, and room to experiment — with a clear goal of helping scale AVIAN toward $10M+ ARR.