Senior Marketing Manager, Go-To-Market

Location: Chicago, IL | Hybrid (1-2 days per week in office)

Reports to: Managing Director

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Who We Are

At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer.

Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients.

If this kind of work and our kind of people energize you, you’ve found the right place.

Who You Are

You’re a hands-on marketer who makes things happen. You’ve spent your career close to the work, turning strategy into a steady cadence of content, events, and outreach that actually ships. You’re energized by a clear market position and the discipline of carrying it anywhere a buyer might meet us.

You understand that in a market flooded with AI-generated noise, senior buyers are moved by credible expert voices, real stories, and warm relationships. This is a hands-on, individual contributor role. You'll own the full marketing function solo, not manage a team, so you're as comfortable in the weeds of a newsletter as you are setting the measurement strategy. You’d rather help technologists publish sharp, field-anchored points of view on a reliable rhythm than blast a generic email to a list and you have the ability to shape an expert's thinking without being the expert yourself.

You own the system, not just the project, and you hold yourself accountable to the results. Over your 6-8 years of experience, you've brought: 

• Proven ownership of marketing measurement and analytics: you’ve instrumented a marketing stack, stood up always-on reporting, and led with numbers instead of waiting for someone else to produce them
• Fluency with SEO and AEO, demand generation, and website and content analytics tooling
• Experience marketing a professional services, consulting, or technical product business to senior B2B buyers
• A track record building and running an editorial or content engine across owned channels: LinkedIn, newsletter, blog, and website
• Real event execution experience, ideally intimate, executive-level formats rather than large-scale conferences
• Comfort partnering with senior technologists to surface stories and points of view, and the editorial judgment to keep them on message
• A relationship-driven instinct: you treat a peer referral and a warm introduction as the highest-value signals you can create
• Plainspoken writing and editing skills, and a low tolerance for jargon
• The organizational savvy to coordinate sales, client service, and leadership toward a shared rhythm, including people who don't report to you

What You’ll Do At 8th Light

We sell expert-led technology solutions and our pipeline tracks with how present and invested our experts are in the market. Your job is to make that presence consistent, sharpen the message behind it, and build the system that keeps it running without depending on heroics. You’ll own execution of our go-to-market plan and report to the Managing Director.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Instrumenting and running always-on reporting on the leading indicators that show the engine is working, including content engagement from target buyer titles, newsletter growth, website journeys, and event conversion
• Turning the numbers into decisions: where to invest, what to cut, concentrating where we can show up reliably and pruning channels we can't sustain
• Owning the editorial calendar across our owned channels, and keeping every surface carrying our position: agentic products, deep platform expertise
• Building and running our content engine: capturing stories, anecdotes, and field observations (including from our executive dinners), organizing them so they’re easy to find, and pushing ready-to-use material to sales and client service leaders for meetings and events
• Elevating a small group of named senior technologists into a consistent publishing rhythm, helping them turn field experience into strong, defensible points of view, while continuing to encourage broad participation from across the firm
• Planning and executing a series of small, themed, invite-only executive dinners across our hub cities, plus a virtual format for those who can’t travel, and turn each one into material that feeds the next quarter’s content
• Supporting our outreach and introduction motions by equipping client service leaders and sales directors with content, curated event schedules, and targeting recommendations

Strongly Preferred Skills

We work across many areas, and we encourage anyone with the experience above to apply. We’d particularly like to hear from applicants with experience in:

• Experience at a small to mid-sized company where marketing stays close to hands-on execution
• Marketing technical services such as software consulting, data, or AI and machine learning work
• Running a thought-leadership or named-voice program with subject-matter experts
• Fluency with the current AI and agentic landscape, and sharp judgment to gauge whether a technical point of view will land as credible with a senior buyer
• Marketing operations and analytics tooling, including SEO and AEO
• Building or customizing your own AI-assisted workflows for content drafting, asset generation, and performance tracking, rather than relying on existing tools

Compensation

At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs.

Our national page range for our Senior Marketing Manager position is: $106,100 - $132,600. 

Travel Expectation

You'll travel about 15-20% of the time, mostly short trips tied to a specific purpose rather than a heavy standing schedule. The bulk of it centers on our executive dinner series, small, invite-only events across our hub cities that you'll help plan and run.

How You’ll Be Supported

At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future.

Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes:

• A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform
• Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development
• Coworking support for our global team
• Flexible PTO with Floating Holidays
• 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees
• Transparent semi-annual promotion panel

See our full list of Benefits (http://8thlight.com/benefits).

8th Light Hubs and Geographies

8th Light’s culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.

If you are hired into a hub, you will be part of a team with regular rituals around coworking and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team.

We hope to see you apply!

#LI-Hybrid

A Note on Your Privacy

At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are, what we're looking for, and how we handle your information throughout the process.

Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice. By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.