Founding Growth Lead

Unusual Ventures; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Base Salary

Equity

Benefits

Hybrid work

Job summary

GovSignals is seeking a Founding GTM Lead to build our growth function. You’ll partner with the founding team across product, sales, deployment, and platform, and own the AI-native GTM engine that scales our reach—from messaging to campaigns and the backbone that powers them.

This is an AI-native marketer role: you’ll wire LLM-driven workflows and automation tools to run what a five‑person team would. If you prefer building systems over hiring agencies and love turning hard problems into

Qualifications

• 3+ years in marketing, growth, or GTM — ideally at early-stage or high-growth startups where you wore many hats.
• Must have experience working directly with federal agencies, government contractors, or organizations supporting the federal government.
• AI-native workflow builder. AI tooling is your daily workbench. You’ve shipped real automations across multiple platforms and use LLMs constantly to enrich, personalize, classify, and write. You know your way around an API even if you don’t write production code.
• System builder. You’ve designed and scaled a marketing system from scratch — automation, attribution, integrations, the whole stack — not just managed one someone else built.
• Sharp translator. You’ve turned technical product details into customer-facing narratives that converted.
• Range. You’re equally comfortable in an automation builder, a CRM, a Notion doc, and a sales pitch.

Responsibilities

• Build the AI-powered GTM engine. Stand up enrichment pipelines, LLM-driven personalization, and agentic outbound using tools like Clay, n8n, Zapier, Make, Apollo, Instantly/Smartlead, Lindy, Gumloop, and custom GPTs / LLM APIs — doing the work a much larger team would do manually.
• Run growth experiments. Scrappy, high-velocity tests on messaging, channels, and ICPs. Ship daily, measure weekly, kill what doesn’t work.
• Translate technical AI into compelling narratives. Decks, demos, one-pagers, case studies, and landing pages — written in plain English about hard problems.
• Design and execute campaigns end-to-end. Email sequences, paid/social, webinars, conference activations, and ABM plays focused on federal primes, Fortune 500 contractors, and government agencies.
• Own the numbers. Define CAC, LTV, and funnel conversion. Build dashboards. Refine strategy based on data, not vibes.
• Partner across the company. Work with product, sales, and deployment so GTM programs align with our ICPs, sales workflows, and what we’re actually shipping.

Skills

GTM Strategy

AI tooling

Gov't experience

Systems building

Data-driven marketing

API integration

Tools

Clay

n8n

Zapier

Make

Apollo

Instantly

Smartlead

Lindy

Gumloop

Custom GPTs

LLM APIs

Job description

FOUNDING GTM LEAD

Washington, DC or New York, NY • Full-time • Hybrid (3+ days/week in office)

ABOUT GOVSIGNALS

GovSignals is the AI system of work for government contracting. It can take the government longer to buy a capability than an adversary takes to field one, and we exist to close that gap.

We’re the only startup managing government contract data with AI in both FedRAMP High and DoW Impact Level 5 environments. Our platform monitors 5,000+ live government data sources, 100,000+ federal and state agencies, and 2,000,000+ government contracts in real time. Our customers range from small contractors to Fortune 500 primes with billions in annual awards, and our government work reaches mission critical contract management. In the past 18 months, we’ve earned FedRAMP High and IL5 authorizations, joined GSA MAS and the MDA SHIELD IDIQ, and signed some of the biggest names in government contracting.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re hiring our Founding GTM Lead to build our growth function. You’ll work directly with the founding team across product, sales, deployment, and platform, and own the AI-native GTM engine that scales GovSignals’ reach — from messaging and campaigns to the operational backbone underneath them.

This is a role for an AI-native marketer who builds the systems, not just runs them. You’ll do the work of a five-person marketing team by wiring LLM-driven workflows and modern automation tools into a GTM engine that compounds. For the past three years, GovSignals’ growth has come almost entirely from word-of-mouth and in-person engagements. Now it’s time to build the next evolution of our GTM motion — and we want it built by someone who treats AI tooling as their daily workbench, not a buzzword. If your instinct when you see a marketing problem is “I can wire that up myself this weekend” rather than “let me hire an agency,” this role is for you.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Build the AI-powered GTM engine. Stand up enrichment pipelines, LLM-driven personalization, and agentic outbound using tools like Clay, n8n, Zapier, Make, Apollo, Instantly/Smartlead, Lindy, Gumloop, and custom GPTs / LLM APIs — doing the work a much larger team would do manually.

• Run growth experiments. Scrappy, high-velocity tests on messaging, channels, and ICPs. Ship daily, measure weekly, kill what doesn’t work.

• Translate technical AI into compelling narratives. Decks, demos, one-pagers, case studies, and landing pages — written in plain English about hard problems.

• Design and execute campaigns end-to-end. Email sequences, paid/social, webinars, conference activations, and ABM plays focused on federal primes, Fortune 500 contractors, and government agencies.

• Own the numbers. Define CAC, LTV, and funnel conversion. Build dashboards. Refine strategy based on data, not vibes.

• Partner across the company. Work with product, sales, and deployment so GTM programs align with our ICPs, sales workflows, and what we’re actually shipping.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 3+ years in marketing, growth, or GTM — ideally at early-stage or high-growth startups where you wore many hats.

• Must have experience working directly with federal agencies, government contractors, or organizations supporting the federal government.

• AI-native workflow builder. AI tooling is your daily workbench. You’ve shipped real automations across multiple platforms and use LLMs constantly to enrich, personalize, classify, and write. You know your way around an API even if you don’t write production code.

• System builder. You’ve designed and scaled a marketing system from scratch — automation, attribution, integrations, the whole stack — not just managed one someone else built.

• Sharp translator. You’ve turned technical product details into customer-facing narratives that converted.

• Range. You’re equally comfortable in an automation builder, a CRM, a Notion doc, and a sales pitch.

Nice to have: you’ve built agentic outbound or AI-driven content ops in a previous role; a background in growth marketing, product marketing, or demand generation; experience marketing AI/ML, developer tools, or SaaS products; familiarity with GovTech, compliance, or federal contracting ecosystems; a background in government contracting, the military, or the intelligence community.

THE TEAM

GovSignals was founded by four cofounders who lived with this problem from both sides — selling to the government and serving inside it — with backgrounds across the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy, Palantir, Amazon, federal contractors building for missiles, and state contractors building for prisons. You’ll work directly with all four. The team at GovSignals has shipped to defense companies, scaled venture-backed startups, and founded companies of their own.

HOW WE HIRE

• Intro conversation (30 min) — your background and how you use AI tools to build GTM and marketing systems.

• Build walkthrough (60 min) — walk us through a workflow, automation, or system you’ve built that replaced work a marketing team would traditionally have done manually.

• Co-founder conversations (15 min) — meet the cofounders.

• Meet the Team in Person

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

• Base Salary: $120,000 – $180,000

• Equity: Meaningful stake in a well-funded, fast-growing startup

• Benefits: medical, vision, and dental, unlimited PTO

• Hybrid in our D.C or Brooklyn Navy Yard offices, 3+ days a week in person. The Yard built ships for the Navy from 1801 to 1966, now we build systems for Navy program offices.

Due to the nature of our government work, this role is open only to U.S. citizens and other U.S. Persons. GovSignals is an equal opportunity employer.