Name that super-specialized job title for the engineer-turned-marketer

July 8, 2015 6:42 PM

Severalish months ago I read an article that described a new kind of professional: the engineer-turned-marketer. This new breed excels as a marketer or growth hacker because s/he is also part data scientist / software engineer / systems architect / etc. and can use this background to thrive in environments that call for technical expertise. The author used a trendy word or portmanteau to describe the job title.

My recall is really shoddy here overall, but I believe I saw it on a well-known online publication with tech leanings (Inc? Fortune? Recode? TechCrunch? Ars Technica?).

In practice, I don't think the job title has caught on and it might even be so silly that it never will catch on outside of startup land, but I'm trying to make a point and can't seem to find the article again. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

posted by doctordrey to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

Data Scientist?
posted by clorox at 7:26 PM on July 8, 2015

I don't know about portmanteau words, but I know a lot of people who all do variations on the engineer-turned-marketer thing with titles like:

• technical marketing manager or engineer
• technical evangelist
• developer advocate
• field CTO

One evangelist I know uses a different title when in Europe, since it evidently is received differently over there. AOL also famously has Shingy, its "digital prophet," but that's something else altogether. There's also "growth hacker" and "full stack employee" which have been thrown around by pundits lately.
posted by troyer at 8:12 PM on July 8, 2015

Yeah, "technical marketing engineer" is the job title for a position like that in my current company.
posted by montag2k at 9:59 PM on July 8, 2015

This isn't a portmanteau, but are you thinking of "marketing technologist"?
posted by neushoorn at 12:54 AM on July 9, 2015

Engininja

(ok I just made that up)
posted by NikitaNikita at 4:31 AM on July 9, 2015

This article about uses the term "Chief Marketing Technology Officer (CMTO)"
posted by dripdripdrop at 5:43 AM on July 9, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far! Unfortunately, it's not any of these. I definitely have to keep looking.
posted by doctordrey at 9:07 AM on July 9, 2015

Response by poster: For (what I assume are) the hordes of you gripping the edge of your seats for an answer: the closest I got to in my research so far is close to what troyer suggested: a "full-stack marketer" (ref 1, ref 2, ref 3) -- but it's still not it!
posted by doctordrey at 11:27 AM on July 9, 2015

evangelist?
posted by hollisimo at 5:07 PM on July 9, 2015