Nick Lafferty

🚀 Founding Marketer @TryProfound
⬅️ Former Growth Consultant for @watershed @airhq @glean @angellist @typefaceai @float_financial
⏪ Prev @loom @mail_gun

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

This is hard to admit, but I didn't want the Head of Marketing job at Profound.

I'm not the right fit for it. And I told that to Trevor Pyle when he started as the second marketer here.

But that left me with a question: what do I actually want?

Throughout my career, I've learned the hard lesson that you have to be honest with yourself in order to get to where you want to go. Sometimes that means saying no. I was honest with myself, and I was honest with Trevor, too.

I told him what I didn't want: a bigger title following the same path. What I wanted was something different. Something that didn't exist yet.

I thrive when I can make a direct impact: rapidly experimenting with new tools and ways of unblocking my team, creating authentic relationships online and in-person, and building the brand in public across conferences, webinars, and podcasts.

Today, Profound is announcing a first-of-its-kind role: The Marketing Engineer.
And I'm becoming Profound's Founding Marketing Engineer.

A Marketing Engineer isn't an ops person. They're part builder, part marketer. They sit inside your marketing team and build the AI agents, automations, and data infrastructure that let everyone else do their highest-leverage work. And that’s exactly the kind of work I love doing.

The Marketing Engineer serves the marketing function. Sales got RevOps. Go-to-market got the GTM Engineer. It’s long overdue for marketing to have its own role.

Every marketing team I talk to tells me some version of the same story: brilliant people buried under operational weight. 80% of the week is eaten by work that could be systematized. The remaining 20% is supposed to be where the magic happens.

The Marketing Engineer changes that, giving the rest of the team something rare: permission to focus. On taste. On creativity. On the slow, deliberate, deeply human work of building a brand people remember.

I didn't want a Head of Marketing job. I wanted this one. And I'm grateful to Trevor and James Cadwallader for believing in me to help bring this new role to the world.

My role is unique. Not only will I be doing the work, but I will be talking about the entire process. What I’m building, what I’m learning, and what it’s like to travel around the world talking about how AI is changing marketing right now.

The era of the Marketing Engineer starts now.

[Sam Seely @samseely]

We have a *stacked* lineup for our first ever marketing engineering meetup next week

- @nicklafferty - Profound
- Cindy Zhang - Ramp
- @Ranikubersky - Cursor
- @joe_reitz - Vercel

Tuesday June 9 at @WorkOS Soho, RSVP below

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

For anyone who wants to hire a marketing engineer, we just open sourced our job description

https://t.co/rzaZx3CEiZ

[Dylan Babbs @dbabbs]

What a MONTH. The team has been operating at full speed. A few of the features we shipped in May

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

@MordyOberstein I can honestly say that we'd never put out something like this :)

[Kaleigh Moore @kaleighf]

When we talked to @nicklafferty of @tryprofound back in March, he dropped this little nugget on the importance of being on sales calls...and I think it's only become more relevant and important.

Full episode of the Fan Out Podcast: https://t.co/NFlTofBQb1

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

@kaleighf @tryprofound 100% stand by this advice still! Especially for early stage companies.

[Profound @tryprofound]

The world's top experts in AI Marketing.

NYC | June 11

Zero Click will be back with an incredible list of speakers joining us from Coca Cola, Delta, CVS Health, U.S. Bank, Ramp, Reddit, LinkedIn, Gamma and more.

[Mic King @VeryWellVersed]

Working side by side with @thejamescad.

Well I was on a #mozinar and he's taking over the world.

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

@tryramp how do i submit myself as tribute for this

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

Ran my first half marathon this weekend @NYCRUNS @bkexperience

[Dylan Babbs @dbabbs]

Last week, we brought over 750 marketing leaders to SF for @tryprofound Zero Click.

And we launched a completely new role: the Marketing Engineer.

Every single business will need this role. Just 3 days in, companies like Google and Autodesk have already adopted the role.

[Ilya Fushman @ilyaf]

Real AI and technology coming to marketing!

[Dylan Babbs @dbabbs]

The Marketing Engineer is the most important hire a marketing team can make in 2026.

Not to run campaigns, but to build the agents that run them.

Today we're introducing a new role to the marketing org:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿

We believe every business on the planet will eventually need one. Their job is to build the Agents, automations, and systems that create a new kind of marketing. Part-builder, part-strategist.

They build Agents that monitor media coverage, flag sentiment shifts, and draft journalist outreach before your PR team even knows there's a story.

They build Agents that track every competitor move, grade its severity, and rewrite your battle cards and talk tracks before your next sales call.

They build Agents that turn every webinar into a brand-voice article, refreshed weekly and queued for your team to review before posting.

Our first marketing hire @nicklafferty has already become @tryprofound's Founding Marketing Engineer, the first person to hold this title at a company fully behind it.

Every marketing team on the planet will use AI to do their jobs better. But to build truly impactful systems, you need an owner and an orchestrator.

That's the Marketing Engineer.

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

finally snagged the handle i should've had here the entire time

[Kaleigh Moore @kaleighf]

Did you know that @kristakdoyle and I have a new show about AI search?

Go check out the Fan Out Podcast were we recently chatted with @nicklafferty of @tryprofound about AEO myths, trends, and a whole lot more: https://t.co/JpTgVoTSgt

[James Cadwallader @thejamescad]

We hosted the @tryprofound conference, Zero Click, in SF last week.

700 attendees and speakers from OpenAI, Figma, Stripe, Reddit etc.

Next one is in NYC on June 11th

[Kaleigh Moore @kaleighf]

Come hang with @tryprofound's @nicklafferty, @kristakdoyle, and me to break down what's *actually* happening in AI search right now in our very first episode of the Fan Out podcast: https://t.co/VuT1N72qDi

If you get the show's title as an AEO reference, 🤝

[chima mmeje🏳️‍🌈 @chimammeje]

If you're headed to #BrightonSEO later this month, I'd love to invite you to our meetup

Fun karaoke
Insights from @aleyda @nicklafferty and @THCapper
Delicious Nigerian food & drinks

Please RT🙏

https://t.co/b4iznEkTp8

[Nick Lafferty @nicklafferty]

@aleyda @davepeiris Congrats, Aleyda!! Super cool!