Function
How Clay built the GTM Engineering function
Two-week sprints, release notes, reports to a co-founder. Not a Salesforce ticket queue.
The loop
- 01Hire the GTMe before the first AEStart with a golden list of target accounts, not a headcount plan.
- 02Split forward-deployed vs internalCustomers vs infrastructure. Osman’s team: deals, QBRs, partnerships.
- 03Run two-week sprintsTickets in, releases twice a month, versioned tables, release notes.
- 04Report to a founder, not RevOpsAt Clay, Varun. Authority to change architecture without departmental politics.
- 05Keep the stack tightClay, Snowflake, Salesforce, Gong. Slack is the interface. Data must land in Clay.
Clay splits GTM Engineering in two: forward-deployed engineers who sit with customers, and an internal team under Osman Sheikhnureldin that owns deals, QBRs, partnerships, and the Slack app GTMEs actually live in. The stack is tight — Clay, Snowflake, Salesforce, Gong — with one hard rule: whatever meeting tool you prefer, the data has to land in Clay.
They run it like product. Two-week sprints, tickets triaged into twice-monthly releases, versioned tables, release notes. Internal GTM Engineering reports to co-founder Varun, not under a VP of Sales or inside RevOps — finance keeps forecasting, GTM Engineering keeps systems. The article’s hiring line: the first GTM hire should be a GTM Engineer, before the first AE, starting with a golden list of target accounts.
