Growth leaders, recruited
by someone who's held the seat
Impaxium recruits CMOs, Chief Growth Officers, and senior marketing leaders for private equity portfolios, startups, and established companies. Every search is run by an operator who has hired for, managed, and sat in these roles — so candidates are vetted on what they can actually do, not what their resume says. And after the hire, we stay in the room while they ramp.
Marketing and growth leadership, top to bottom
Most recruiters can source marketing candidates. Very few can evaluate them — test whether a performance marketer actually understands conversion tracking, whether a CMO candidate can defend CAC math to a board, whether a RevOps hire has really built attribution or just used it. We recruit for the roles below because we can vet them at the technical level.
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Full CMO executive search for companies that need a marketing leader who owns strategy, channels, measurement, and team accountability. We define the role against your actual growth model, source operators rather than presenters, and pressure-test candidates on unit economics, channel strategy, and board communication before you ever meet them.
Chief Growth Officer
The CGO seat blends marketing, sales alignment, and revenue accountability — and it fails when companies hire a brand marketer into a P&L job. We recruit growth executives who have owned pipeline and revenue targets, not just impressions, and who can build the demand engine your plan assumes.
VP of Marketing / VP of Growth
The first true marketing executive at a startup, or the operating leader under a CMO at a larger company. We calibrate for stage: a seed-stage VP of Growth and an enterprise VP of Marketing are different jobs with different failure modes, and we screen for the one you actually need.
Head of Demand Generation
Demand gen leaders who can build predictable pipeline — paid, organic, outbound, and lifecycle working as one system. Candidates are tested on funnel math, attribution literacy, and whether they scale spend on verified measurement or on faith.
Performance Marketing Directors & Managers
Paid media leaders and hands-on managers across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, and paid social. This is our home turf: we can tell in one working session whether a candidate has actually run accounts at scale, and our screens include real platform scenarios, not hypotheticals.
Marketing Operations & RevOps
The hires most companies get wrong because nobody internally can evaluate them. We vet marketing ops and RevOps candidates on the real stack — GA4, GTM, server-side tracking, Meta CAPI, HubSpot architecture, lead routing, attribution — because we build these systems ourselves.
Lifecycle & CRM Marketing
Email, SMS, and automation leaders who treat the list as a revenue channel with measurable output — deliverability, segmentation, journey architecture, and compliance included. We screen for builders who have scaled programs, not just maintained them.
Product Marketing, SEO & Content Leadership
Product marketing managers who can translate product into demand, and SEO and content leaders who understand the technical side — indexation, site architecture, and where AI search is moving discovery. Screened against real audits and real positioning work.
Fractional-to-Permanent Leadership
Not sure the company is ready for a full-time executive? A fractional CMO engagement defines the role in practice, and when it's time, we run the search for the permanent leader — with an overlap period so momentum and institutional knowledge carry over instead of resetting.
Define → Source & filter → Vet → Ramp alongside
Recruiting fails at two points: defining a role the business doesn't actually need, and hiring a candidate nobody was qualified to evaluate. We fix both — and then we do the part almost no recruiter does: we stay after the offer letter.
Define the real role
We scope the seat against your growth model, stage, and budget — including the honest conversation about whether you need a CMO, a VP, a strong director, or a fractional leader first. The role definition comes from operating experience, not a template.
Source and filter
Targeted sourcing from operator networks plus structured filtering of every candidate. You see a short slate of people worth your time, each with a straight assessment of strengths, gaps, and fit — not a stack of resumes to sort yourself.
Technical vetting
Candidates are tested on the actual work: CAC and payback math, channel strategy, tracking and attribution literacy, team management, and board-level communication. A polished interviewer who can't defend a media plan doesn't make the slate.
Onboard, train, and ramp alongside
After the hire, we work alongside your new leader as an embedded resource — transferring context, supporting the 90-day plan, backstopping technical decisions, and giving you an independent read on how the ramp is going. The search isn't done until the leader is performing.
From first marketing hire to portfolio-wide leadership
Private equity firms & portfolio companies
The investment thesis assumed a growth engine; most portfolio companies don't have anyone qualified to build one. We recruit marketing leadership across the portfolio — post-acquisition CMO placement, growth leaders for roll-ups, and the evaluation muscle to know whether an incumbent team can execute the plan. This connects directly to our PE advisory practice.
- Post-acquisition CMO and VP placement
- 100-day plan and value creation support
- Incumbent team assessment
- Fractional leadership between hires
Venture-backed startups
The first senior marketing hire is the one founders most often get wrong — usually by hiring for the company they want to be instead of the stage they're at. We define the right first seat, recruit operators who have built at your stage, and stay on to make sure the hire actually takes.
- First Head of Growth or VP of Marketing
- Stage-calibrated role definition
- Founder-to-marketer handoff support
- Demand gen and performance leads
Mid-market companies
Companies that grew on referrals, a founder's network, or a single channel — and now need a real marketing function with a leader who can build it. We recruit the executive, help structure the team underneath, and provide the technical evaluation the leadership team doesn't have in-house.
- First professional CMO or VP of Marketing
- Team structure and org design input
- Marketing ops and RevOps builds
- Agency-to-in-house transitions
Enterprise & established teams
Larger organizations adding specialized growth leadership — a head of demand generation, a performance marketing director, a lifecycle leader — where the risk isn't finding candidates but filtering them. We bring the technical screen that separates operators from narrators, and support the onboarding into complex org structures.
- Specialized leadership searches
- Technical screening for internal recruiters
- Regulated-industry marketing leaders
- Onboarding and 90-day ramp support
Hire a growth leader you can actually verify
Tell us the seat you're trying to fill — or the growth problem behind it — and we'll come back with a straight read on the role, the market, and how we'd run the search.
What to know before you start a search
What roles does Impaxium recruit for?
Marketing and growth leadership across the function: Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Growth Officer, VP of Marketing, VP of Growth, Head of Demand Generation, performance marketing directors and managers, marketing operations, RevOps, lifecycle and CRM marketing, product marketing, and SEO and content leadership — plus fractional and fractional-to-permanent structures.
How is this different from a traditional executive search firm?
Three ways. The search is run by an operator who has held and hired for these seats, not a generalist recruiter working from a keyword list. Candidates are vetted at the technical level — CAC math, tracking infrastructure, channel strategy — not just on resume and references. And after the hire, we stay embedded as a resource while your new leader ramps, which is the part of the process almost every search firm skips.
Do you work with private equity firms?
Yes — marketing leadership for PE portfolio companies is a core focus. That includes post-acquisition CMO placement, growth leadership for roll-ups and platform companies, incumbent team assessment during diligence or the first 100 days, and fractional leadership for companies between hires. It pairs with our board-level PE advisory practice.
What size companies do you recruit for?
The full range: venture-backed startups making their first senior marketing hire, mid-market companies professionalizing the function, private equity portfolio companies, and enterprise teams adding specialized growth leadership. The common thread is the evaluation problem — someone needs to be able to tell whether a candidate can actually do the work.
What does "working alongside the hire" actually mean?
After the offer is signed, we don't disappear. We support the onboarding plan, transfer market and role context, act as a technical backstop for early decisions, help the leader build their 90-day plan, and give leadership an independent read on how the ramp is progressing. The engagement ends when the leader is performing, not when the placement fee clears.