Head of Marketing

Head Of Marketing

Manifest is on a mission to secure the global software and AI supply chain. Our platform automates the discovery and analysis of risks across internally built and third-party software and AI systems, giving security, product, and engineering teams complete visibility into the components and dependencies that make up their technology stack. From product security and AI risk to supplier risk and compliance, we help teams trust the software and AI they build and buy.

Founded by alumni from the Department of Defense, CISA, and Palantir, Manifest is backed by leading investors including Ensemble VC, First Round Capital, Homebrew, BoxGroup, XYZ Venture Capital, AE Ventures, Leap435, and Overmatch VC. The company partners with the US Air Force, DHS, Global 2000 companies, and critical infrastructure organizations across defense, automotive, and financial services to bring transparency, resilience, and trust to modern digital systems.

This is a hands-on, single-threaded role for a doer and a manager. Manifest is hiring a Head of Marketing to run marketing as a pipeline-generation engine and put Manifest on the map. You will inherit a working playbook and a bench of agencies already supporting our efforts, so you are not starting from a blank page. Your job is to own it, sharpen it, and drive it harder. You will own the full funnel: positioning and messaging, content and slides, demand generation, social, events, analyst relations, and a marketing-led outbound motion that builds a pipeline without a BDR team. You are the person who writes the copy, builds the deck, runs the event, posts on LinkedIn, directs the agencies, and reports the number, extending yourself with those agency partners and offshore help to carry the execution heavy work so you get leverage without building headcount.

The mandate for this role is two-sided: build a pipeline and build the brand. Manifest is doing category-defining work in a space that is still forming, and part of this role is making sure the market knows it. You will drive brand recognition and awareness across the security community, the federal and enterprise buyers we sell to, the analysts who shape the category, and the investors who fund it, so that when a CISO or a program office starts looking at software supply chain and AI security, Manifest is the name they already know. Pipeline and brand are not competing goals here; brand awareness facilitates pipeline-building and speeds closing.

You already know cyber. We sell to some of the most technical and skeptical buyers in software: CISOs, compliance leaders, and engineering teams across federal and defense, enterprise and commercial, healthcare and medical device, and automotive AI risk. You can hold a credible conversation about software supply chain risk, SBOMs, vulnerability management, and the regulatory drivers behind them, and you can turn that fluency into messaging a technical buyer will actually trust.

You will report to the Chief Revenue Officer and work alongside an established enterprise sales team that already carries its own pipeline goals. Marketing's job is to feed and accelerate that pipeline, not to operate in isolation. This is a metrics-driven role, and you will be measured on the outcomes that matter: qualified pipeline, return on marketing spend, website traffic and engagement, brand awareness across the security and investor communities, and analyst mindshare. This is an intense, high ownership role with a direct line between your work and the company's growth.

What You'll Own

• Pipeline Accountability: Own a qualified pipeline number alongside the CRO and enterprise sales team, feeding and accelerating the pipeline goals they already carry. Every program ties back to the pipeline created and influenced; report the metrics on a regular cadence rather than reporting activity.
• Budget, Spend & Return: Own the marketing budget and be accountable for every dollar. Know where spend is and is not producing pipeline, cut what is not working, put more behind what is, and be able to show the pipeline and revenue return on marketing spend at any time.
• Positioning, Product Marketing & GTM Feedback Loop: Own positioning and messaging across federal, enterprise/commercial, and regulated verticals — translating technical capability into narratives that land with security, compliance, and engineering buyers. Own product marketing end-to-end, partnering with product on PR and launch for major releases. Feed market and buyer signals back into the product, so what gets built and how it's sold move together.
• Content, Decks & Competitive Enablement: Write and ship the work yourself — web copy, one-pagers, campaigns, email, sales, and pitch decks. Keep battlecards and competitive intel up to date, and host internal training sessions with DSE and product to sharpen the field's win strategy.
• Demand Generation Channels: Outbound, Web & Social: Build and run a marketing-led outbound motion without a BDR team — lists, sequences, ABM plays. Drive measurable growth in website traffic and conversion, owning SEO and the site as a pipeline surface. Own social presence and turn LinkedIn into a real demand channel, including executive amplification.
• Events, End to End: Plan, coordinate, and run field and event presence — conference selection, booth logistics, executive dinners, webinars — without an events team.
• Analyst Relations & Executive Brand: Work analysts and category voices (Gartner, Forrester, GigaOm, IDC, the supply-chain-security community). Grow the CEO's personal brand — speaking slots, keynotes, panels, webinars.
• Brand, Investor Awareness & Momentum: Generate awareness and engagement across the security and venture communities, keep Manifest visible to investors and press, and build the kind of hype that supports the next round and the next hire.
• Vendor Leverage: You inherit agency partners already supporting the work. Own and direct them, add offshore help where it adds capacity, and keep them all pointed at pipeline, while you keep ownership of strategy, messaging, and anything that has to be exactly right.

What You Bring

• 7 to 10 years of B2B marketing experience, with meaningful time owning both brand and demand at the same time. Experience across B2B and enterprise, and ideally federal and public sector, with a real understanding of how government buying differs from commercial.
• Cybersecurity and market domain knowledge. Working knowledge of cybersecurity — you understand the security buyer and the space, including software supply chain, SBOM, vulnerability management, and compliance, and you do not need to be taught the fundamentals.
• Product marketing chops. You can own launches, positioning, competitive enablement, and sales enablement that visibly change how the field sells, and you partner naturally with product on PR and go-to-market.
• Experience building an executive or founder brand and analyst/press relations. You have turned a leader into a visible voice in a category through speaking slots, panels, moderation, and webinars, and you've worked with industry analysts and press to build category presence and share of voice.
• Pipeline accountability. A track record of being directly accountable to a pipeline or revenue number, ideally in an early-stage or resource-constrained environment.
• Budget and P&L rigor. Metrics-driven and rigorous about spend. You run marketing like a P&L, track spend against pipeline and cost of acquisition, and make budget calls based on data rather than habit.
• Demand generation channel fluency. Proven ability to build outbound and demand programs that create a pipeline without a large SDR or BDR team, plus fluency with LinkedIn and social as demand and awareness channels, with concrete examples of traffic, engagement, or pipeline you've driven.
• Hands-on production and resourceful leverage. Hands on production skills — you are the one who writes the one pager, builds the deck, edits the copy, and ships it, not the one who only reviews someone else's draft. You also know how to get high-quality output from offshore contractors and agencies on a startup budget, managing that work yourself without needing a team or org to do it.
• Events ownership. Experience owning events end-to-end as a solo operator.
• AI-accelerated workflow. AI is part of your default workflow. You can point to concrete, AI-accelerated output and the workflows you built around it, paired with good judgment about what still needs expert review before it ships.
• High agency. High agency and a strong bias to action, comfortable owning outcomes end to end in an intense, fast-moving environment.

Nice to have

• Prior experience marketing to the US Air Force, DoD, or federal civilian agencies.
• Familiarity with SBOM and AIBOM and the regulatory drivers behind them, including EO 14028, the OMB software security memos, and FDA premarket cybersecurity requirements.
• Existing analyst or press relationships in the security space.

Compensation

$180,000 - $200