Director, Product Marketing - HCM & Payroll

HR, payroll, and workforce data are becoming more connected to the financial decisions businesses make every day — from labour costs and payroll accuracy to compliance, headcount planning, and business forecasting. For many mid‑market organisations, these workflows remain manual, disconnected, and difficult to reconcile across HR and Finance.

Sage HCM connects HR, payroll, workforce data, and financial management through Sage Intacct, creating a significant opportunity to define a differentiated market position in a crowded HCM and payroll landscape.

AI agents are a key part of Sage’s innovation in this space. Sage HCM launched with the HCM Agent, focused on HR and payroll workflows such as payroll preparation, validation, reconciliation, and surfacing potential compliance risks. This reflects Sage’s broader “glass box” approach to AI, designed to make recommendations transparent, explainable, and auditable in workflows where trust, accuracy, and accountability matter.

Director, Product Marketing – HCM & Payroll

You will set the product marketing strategy for Sage’s North American HCM, payroll, workforce management, and AI-enabled portfolio. You will connect market insight, product strategy, commercial priorities, and go‑to‑market execution to improve performance at scale.

This is a senior leadership role for a product marketer who can shape market strategy, influence roadmap and investment decisions, build compelling portfolio narratives, and align Product, Sales, Growth & Performance Marketing, Customer Success, Partner, and leadership teams around a clear commercial direction.

You will be accountable for the quality and consistency of positioning, messaging, value proposition, launch strategy, packaging and pricing inputs, sales enablement, adoption programmes, and in‑life optimisation across multiple workstreams. You will also set repeatable product marketing standards, resolve cross‑functional ambiguity, strengthen launch readiness, and coach teams so product marketing becomes more consistent, scalable, and commercially impactful.

This role requires someone who can combine strategic thinking with commercial judgement, use evidence to guide prioritization, and translate complex customer, market, competitor, product, and commercial signals into decisions that help Sage win.

Location Requirement

Hybrid; 3 days per week from our San Jose Office

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ Years product marketing experience in B2B SaaS, ideally within HCM, Payroll, Workforce Management, Financial Management, or adjacent business applications.
• Proven experience leading product marketing strategy across a portfolio, domain, region, or major programme.
• Strong understanding of SaaS go‑to‑market models, customer journeys, commercial performance drivers, segmentation, pricing, packaging, adoption, retention, and growth dynamics.
• Advanced capability in positioning, messaging, value proposition development, and executive‑level storytelling.
• Experience using customer insight, market research, competitive intelligence, analyst perspectives, product signals, and commercial data to shape strategy and decision‑making.
• Demonstrated ability to influence product roadmap, investment decisions, GTM sequencing, segmentation, launch priorities, and commercial planning.
• Strong cross‑functional leadership experience, with the ability to align Product, Sales, Growth, Marketing, Customer Success, Partner, and senior leadership teams in a global matrixed organisation.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity, resolve competing priorities, make trade‑offs, and drive clarity across complex workstreams.
• Strong commercial judgement with a track record of improving launch effectiveness, sales readiness, customer adoption, retention, or revenue growth.
• Confident working with AI‑enabled tools and workflows, with the ability to lead responsible and effective AI adoption within product marketing activity.
• People leadership, coaching, or matrix leadership experience, with the ability to raise standards, develop capability, and scale product marketing impact.

Product Marketing Strategy & Portfolio Leadership

• Own the product marketing strategy for Sage’s North American HCM, Payroll, Workforce Management, and AI-enabled portfolio.
• Shape the commercial narrative across the portfolio, ensuring Sage has a clear, differentiated, and compelling position in the market.
• Connect customer needs, market dynamics, competitive alternatives, product capability, roadmap maturity, pricing, packaging, and route‑to‑market considerations into a clear product marketing strategy.
• Influence roadmap, investment, segmentation, packaging, pricing, and go‑to‑market prioritisation through evidence‑based recommendations.
• Translate complex product and buyer nuance into clear strategic choices that support growth, adoption, retention, and market differentiation.

Market, Customer & Competitive Insight

• Lead the development of market, customer, competitor, analyst, product, and commercial insight across the HCM and Payroll domain.
• Establish a clear insight rhythm that ensures Product, Sales, Growth, Customer Success, Partner, and leadership teams have decision‑ready evidence.
• Challenge assumptions, identify market opportunities, and surface risks or gaps that could affect commercial performance.
• Use customer feedback, win/loss insights, competitive research, commercial data, and product signals to inform positioning, roadmap discussions, launch priorities, and growth planning.
• Ensure insight is actionable, prioritised, and connected to business decisions rather than being purely descriptive.

Positioning, Messaging & Value Proposition

• Lead the development of differentiated positioning, messaging architecture, and value propositions across multiple buyer audiences, segments, products, and routes to market.
• Ensure messaging is clear, commercially relevant, evidence‑led, and adaptable across regional and customer contexts.
• Strengthen Sage’s market narrative around connected HR, payroll, workforce data, financial management, and responsible AI.
• Ensure internal teams understand and consistently communicate why Sage, why now, and why this solution.
• Create messaging standards and governance that improve consistency, quality, and cross‑functional adoption.

Go‑to‑Market Strategy & Commercial Impact

• Set strategic direction for go‑to‑market activity across the HCM and Payroll portfolio, ensuring launches and growth initiatives are prioritised, sequenced, and commercially focused.
• Lead cross‑functional launch planning across Product, Sales, Growth & Performance Marketing, Customer Success, Partner, and regional teams.
• Define readiness expectations, identify dependencies, manage trade‑offs, and ensure teams are aligned around launch objectives, audiences, messaging, timing, and success measures.
• Use performance data and post‑launch learning loops to optimise adoption, pipeline impact, conversion, retention, and customer outcomes.
• Drive in‑life optimisation across the portfolio, ensuring product marketing continues to support customer adoption, expansion, migration, and growth beyond initial launch.

Sales Enablement & Revenue Effectiveness

• Set the enablement strategy for Sales, Customer Success, Partner, and customer‑facing teams across the HCM and Payroll portfolio.
• Ensure teams have the messaging, tools, competitive insight, customer proof points, talk tracks, and value narratives needed to engage buyers effectively.
• Partner with Sales and Revenue teams to understand commercial blockers and improve field readiness, buyer engagement, and customer conversations.
• Establish enablement rhythms that improve consistency, confidence, and effectiveness across regional teams.
• Ensure enablement is connected to measurable commercial outcomes and customer value.

Customer Migration, Adoption & Growth

• Lead product marketing strategy for customer migration, adoption, retention, and growth initiatives across the North American HCM and Payroll portfolio.
• Shape customer‑facing messaging and engagement strategies that support confidence, clarity, and adoption through periods of change.
• Partner with Customer Success, Product, Growth, and Sales teams to identify adoption barriers and build programmes that help customers realise value.
• Ensure migration and adoption narratives are grounded in customer needs, commercial priorities, and product readiness.
• Support growth initiatives that strengthen customer relationships and expand Sage’s relevance across HR, payroll, finance, and workforce management workflows.

Cross‑functional Leadership & Executive Influence

• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders across Product, Sales, Growth, Marketing, Customer Success, Partner, and leadership teams.
• Act as a strategic partner to Product and Commercial leaders, bringing market and customer evidence into roadmap, GTM, and investment discussions.
• Resolve ambiguity across teams by creating clarity on priorities, trade‑offs, ownership, and decision‑making.
• Influence without authority across a global matrixed organisation, building alignment at scale.
• Communicate confidently with executive audiences, using clear storytelling, sound judgement, and evidence to support recommendations.

Product Marketing Standards, Capability & AI Adoption

• Set repeatable product marketing standards, frameworks, and operating rhythms that improve quality, consistency, and commercial impact across the domain.
• Coach product marketers and cross‑functional partners to improve positioning, messaging, launch readiness, insight development, and commercial storytelling.
• Lead the adoption of AI tools and modern marketing workflows within the domain to improve speed, quality, consistency, and scale.
• Ensure AI‑enabled product marketing practices are used responsibly, with appropriate attention to accuracy, transparency, customer trust, and business relevance.
• Act as a change leader, helping teams adopt better ways of working and raising the overall maturity of product marketing.

Benefits

• Competitive annual bonuses (20%)
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) retirement match (100% matching up to 4%)
• 32 days paid time off (22 personal days & 10 national holidays)
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave (offered 1 year after the start date)
• Work Away Program: Opportunity to work & play for 10 weeks from another country (Sage‑approved list)
• Sage Foundation: 5 days paid yearly to volunteer
• $5,250 tuition reimbursement per calendar year starting 6 months after the hire date
• Sage Wellness Rewards Program ($600 wellness credit and $360 fitness reimbursement annually)

The compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job‑related knowledge, education, and experience. For this role, in those locations, the target salary range for new hires is: $191,997 to $240,000. In addition to base salary, employees will participate in either a bonus plan based on company and individual performance, or a role‑based, commission plan. Our talent acquisition team will provide the specific opportunity on our bonus or incentive programs to eligible candidates. The range listed is just one component of the Sage total compensation package.