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Chief Growth Officer job description

The JD lives in the reporting lines

A Chief Growth Officer JD is judged on one thing: what reports into the role. Get the authority right and the rest follows. Get it wrong and you’ve written an expensive CMO job with a fashionable title.

Direct answer

A real Chief Growth Officer job description has marketing, sales, and product-led growth reporting in, names a single cross-functional growth metric, and reports to the CEO. Without authority over sales and product, it’s a renamed CMO.

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The template

Chief Growth Officer — job description

Role summary

The Chief Growth Officer owns the company’s growth across functions — unifying marketing, sales, product-led growth, and customer success behind a single growth number and owning the handoffs between them.

Reporting structure

  • Reports to: CEO (required)
  • Direct/dotted reports: marketing, sales (or sales partnership), revenue operations, lifecycle/retention, product-led growth
  • Peer relationships: Chief Revenue Officer, CMO, Chief Product Officer

Core responsibilities

  • Own the growth number — one metric the whole go-to-market motion is accountable to.
  • Unify the funnel — align marketing, sales, and product growth; own the leaky handoffs.
  • Lifecycle & expansion — drive retention and net revenue retention, not just acquisition.
  • Growth analytics & experimentation — instrument the funnel and run the experiment engine.

Required background

  • Cross-functional growth leadership spanning at least two of marketing, sales, product
  • A track record owning a company-level growth or revenue number, not a channel metric
  • The credibility to direct peers who don’t formally report in

Compensation

Typically $300K–$600K+, heavily variable-weighted; see the Chief Growth Officer salary guide.

What goes wrong

Five hiring mistakes

  1. Authority on paper onlyIf sales and product growth still report elsewhere, the CGO can’t do the one thing the role exists for.
  2. No single growth numberWithout one owned metric, the role becomes a coordinator measured on nothing in particular.
  3. Reporting below the CEOA CGO under the CMO or sales lead is a sub-function. The role needs the CEO line to direct peers.
  4. Hiring it to impress investors"Chief Growth Officer" tests well in a pitch, but a title with no authority creates internal confusion, not growth.
  5. Overlapping it with a CRO undefinedIf you also have a CRO, draw the line — growth/acquisition vs revenue execution — or they’ll collide.

Related

More on the Chief Growth Officer

Chief Growth Officer — role guide

Mandate, org placement, when to hire.

How to become a CGO

Entry tracks, skills, roadmap.

Chief Growth Officer salary

Why the package is variable-heavy.

CMO vs Chief Growth Officer

How to tell a real growth role from a renamed one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a Chief Growth Officer job description include?
The make-or-break clause is the reporting lines beneath the role. A real Chief Growth Officer JD has marketing, sales, and product-led growth reporting in — that authority is the whole point. The JD must also name a single growth metric the role owns. If the draft lists "drive growth across the organization" but leaves sales and product reporting elsewhere, you’re writing a CMO job and calling it growth.
How do you write a CGO JD that isn't just a CMO JD?
Put authority in writing. Specify that sales, marketing, customer success, and product-led growth report to or are directed by the role, and attach one cross-functional growth number (net revenue retention, blended CAC payback, overall growth rate). A CMO JD optimizes marketing-sourced pipeline; a Chief Growth Officer JD optimizes the whole funnel and owns the handoffs between functions. See the CMO vs CGO comparison.
Who should a Chief Growth Officer report to?
The CEO, without exception. The role only functions with CEO-level authority because it directs functions that would otherwise report separately. A Chief Growth Officer reporting into sales or marketing is a sub-function with an inflated title, and the JD will read that way to serious candidates.
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Thomas Prommer
Thomas Prommer Technology Executive — CTO/CIO/CTAIO

These salary reports are built on firsthand hiring experience across 20+ years of engineering leadership (adidas, $9B platform, 500+ engineers) and a proprietary network of 200+ executive recruiters and headhunters who share placement data with us directly. As a top-1% expert on institutional investor networks, I've conducted 200+ technical due diligence consultations for PE/VC firms including Blackstone, Bain Capital, and Berenberg — work that requires current, accurate compensation benchmarks across every seniority level. Our team cross-references recruiter data with BLS statistics, job board salary disclosures, and executive compensation surveys to produce ranges you can actually negotiate with.

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