The posting
About the Role
Backbase is seeking a strategic, commercially minded leader to serve as the right-hand of the CMO and help shape and execute the marketing agenda.
You will work with the CMO to translate Backbase’s growth ambitions into clear priorities, investment decisions, and measurable outcomes. You will bring independent judgment to complex questions, challenge assumptions, and connect company strategy with the decisions marketing makes every day.
This role combines strategy, business performance, and transformation. You will lead initiatives that span functions, strengthen the effectiveness of the marketing leadership team, and ensure that priorities translate into action. Working closely with Sales, Product, Finance, and Revenue Operations, you will help align marketing’s contribution to revenue growth, market leadership, and customer expansion.
Success means better decisions, faster execution, stronger accountability, and greater impact from marketing investment.
Key Responsibilities
- Shape the marketing strategy and investment priorities. Partner with the CMO to define the marketing agenda, informed by company objectives, customer needs, market developments, and commercial performance. Develop recommendations on where to focus, invest, scale, or stop, making trade-offs clear.
- Own the execution of the CMO’s strategic agenda. Translate priorities into plans with accountable owners, milestones, dependencies, and success measures. Drive progress across functions, resolve obstacles, and surface decisions that require CMO intervention. Lead selected initiatives directly from problem definition through delivery.
- Turn business performance into decisions. Work with Revenue Operations, Finance, and marketing leaders to assess pipeline contribution, account progression, customer growth, investment effectiveness, and execution performance. Identify the drivers behind results and recommend corrective action. Ensure leadership reviews produce decisions and follow-through.
- Lead planning and resource allocation. Own the annual and quarterly marketing planning process and budget governance. Evaluate proposed investments against strategic priorities and expected outcomes. Recommend adjustments to spending, capacity, and resources as business needs and performance change.
- Strengthen alignment across the go-to-market organization. Partner with Sales, Product, Finance, and Revenue Operations to align priorities and resolve competing demands. Connect product direction, market positioning, and commercial execution so that strategic initiatives move coherently across the business.
- Drive marketing transformation. Lead initiatives that improve marketing’s capabilities, speed, and effectiveness, including AI adoption, planning practices, and ways of working. Establish clear business cases, drive adoption, and measure the resulting impact.
- Increase leadership effectiveness and accountability. Own the operating cadence of the marketing leadership team. Focus meetings on material decisions, risks, and outcomes; make commitments explicit; and ensure follow-through. Challenge constructively when priorities, resources, or execution are misaligned.
- Support executive decision-making and communication. Prepare concise recommendations, business cases, and executive narratives for company planning, leadership reviews, and board discussions. Represent the CMO in agreed forums and drive actions within a clearly delegated mandate.
Qualifications
- Relevant experience: Typically 12–15+ years of experience (or 10+ years with a Master’s/MBA) across strategy consulting, B2B SaaS corporate development, or GTM leadership. A track record of working closely with senior executives and delivering initiatives across organizational boundaries.
- Strategic and commercial judgment: Ability to structure ambiguous problems, evaluate opportunities, challenge assumptions, and recommend practical choices. Understands how enterprise go-to-market decisions affect revenue growth, customer value, and business economics.
- Execution leadership: Demonstrated ability to turn strategy into results, establish accountability, resolve dependencies, and sustain progress through competing priorities.
- Analytical strength: Comfortable interpreting financial and commercial performance, assessing investment cases, and distinguishing meaningful signals from reporting noise.
- Executive influence: Credibility to challenge senior leaders constructively, resolve disagreement, and build alignment without relying on formal authority. Exercises discretion and sound judgment when representing the CMO.
- Marketing and go-to-market understanding: Working knowledge of enterprise buying journeys, positioning, demand generation, account-based marketing, field marketing, and customer expansion.
- Transformation mindset: Practical understanding of how AI, technology, and organizational change can improve marketing performance. Experience driving adoption and measurable improvements.
- Communication: Exceptional ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations, concise writing, and executive presentations.
What success looks like in the first 12 months
- A clear marketing strategy with explicit priorities, investment choices, and measurable outcomes.
- Strategic initiatives delivering against agreed milestones, with obstacles addressed early.
- Leadership reviews that consistently lead to decisions, corrective action, and accountable follow-through.
- Stronger alignment between Marketing, Sales, Product, Finance, and Revenue Operations.
- Demonstrable improvements in marketing effectiveness through focused investment and transformation.
- Greater capacity for the CMO to concentrate on company strategy, customers, market leadership, and growth.
