Head of Marketing (Founding) (San Mateo)

Head of Marketing (Founding)
Location:

SF / Hybrid
WALT
WALT is the Autonomous Data Engineer, an AI system that helps enterprises run their entire data platform: ingestion, transformation, reasoning, operations (data quality), and governance. A suite of purpose-built agents handles the work end to end, on a neuro-symbolic framework built for enterprise-grade reliability. We're backed by top investors and prominent angels, and trusted in production by leading enterprises across healthcare, retail, and advertising.
WALT was founded by Thiru Arunachalam and Avi Shetty, second-time founders who have built planet-scale data platforms at Apple, Meta, LinkedIn, and Yahoo*. Ranjith Prabu leads engineering as CTO.
The Role
This is our founding marketing hire. You'll partner directly with the founders to build the go-to-market engine that puts WALT in front of the data leaders shaping enterprise AI strategy, and helps define how the industry talks about autonomous data engineering.
You'll wear several hats across product marketing, account-based marketing, field, and content, leading execution end to end, agent-augmented. There's potential to expand the function and lead a team as the business scales. The founders own the technical narrative; your role is to sharpen it in market and build every channel that gets it heard.
WALT sells into enterprise customers with six-figure deal sizes. The work is named-account, strategic, and high-craft.
What You'll Do
Drive qualified pipeline from enterprise data leaders. Bring CDOs, VPs of Data, and Heads of Data Engineering into conversations with our sales team. Build the engine that consistently surfaces the right accounts at the right moment.
Build the account-based marketing motion from scratch. A focused list of priority enterprise targets, agent-augmented account research, signal-based triggers, and personalized multi-channel outreach.
Drive flagship industry events and executive programs. Engineer our presence at major conferences and own field formats like executive dinners, roundtables, and owned events as integrated ABM motions, from pre-event outbound through post-event follow-up.
Stand up the marketing infrastructure. A single source of truth for accounts and pipeline, qualification stages enforced as gates, and modern tooling for enrichment, attribution, and conversation intelligence.
Sharpen positioning in market. Sit on sales calls, listen to customer conversations, and surface what's resonating. Refine our category narrative in partnership with the founders.
Lead content and thought leadership. Develop our content strategy across channels, drive customer case studies, and position WALT on relevant podcasts and stages.
Build the agent-powered GTM stack. Use AI agents for account research, enrichment, sequencing, and qualification, so a small team can operate like a large one.
Activate customer advocates. Convert current deployments into named references, case studies, and speaking opportunities.
Sequence channels and drive measurable results. Across events, founder brand, ABM outbound, warm network, partnerships, and content, lean into what compounds and refine the rest.
Grow the team over time, starting with sales development as the motion scales.
What You Bring
Fluency with data engineering and the modern data stack. You can hold a substantive conversation with a CDO about data architecture, AI in the enterprise, and where it adds real value. You don't need to write code, but you need to be credible with technical buyers.
5 to 8 years in B2B enterprise marketing, with deep experience in account-based marketing, field marketing, or category creation. Comfortable with six-figure enterprise deal sizes.
An early-stage operator who wears multiple hats. You've been an early marketing hire at a startup and built the function across product marketing, ABM, field, and content, rather than specializing in one.
Hands-on by default. You're as comfortable in the CRM and writing the email as you are in the strategy doc.
Agent-savvy. You already use AI tools to make small teams operate like larger ones. Bonus if you've built outbound, enrichment, or qualification workflows using agents, and a significant plus if your portfolio includes GTM systems you've designed to run themselves.
Strong writer. You can hold an executive's attention in 80 words and craft a clear, compelling message across formats.
Startup experience. You're comfortable with ambiguity, fast cycles, and building without a playbook.
A point of view on category creation. You understand the difference between marketing a product and naming a category, and you've done the latter.
Nice to Have
Marketed to data engineering, data platform, or AI infrastructure buyers.
Built or scaled an ABM motion from zero.
Previously a founding or first marketing hire.
Familiar with the operating pace of serial founders.
What's in It for You
A founding GTM role at a category-defining company. You build the playbook, not inherit it.
Direct partnership with the founders, who own the technical narrative and want a peer on the GTM side.
Real budget and the autonomy to deploy it where it works.
Already deployed at some of the world's largest enterprises, with proven production work to amplify.
Backed by top investors and prominent angels.
A founding team of second-time founders from Apple, Meta, LinkedIn, and Yahoo* with planet-scale data platform experience.

The opportunity to define what a 2026 marketing function looks like: small, agent-leveraged, and built around customer judgment.