For decades, creative roles dominated marketing hiring. Agencies were structured around them, and success was measured by ideas generated. That model is now being dismantled.
As global marketing operations scale and AI accelerates content production, the industry’s constraint has moved from ideation to execution. Creative output is no longer scarce; coordination is.
The most in-demand roles in marketing are now operational and delivery positions, including project managers, account leads, delivery specialists and technologists, reflecting a structural redesign of how marketing work is organised and delivered.
“While AI has signalling a new era for the way creative assets are ideated and made, it hasn’t removed the operational increases that follow,” says Gabrielle Gray, global head of capabilities at Brandtech+.
“As output volumes increase, the pressure shifts to planning, coordination, localisation, approvals and deployment across markets. The roles that manage that complexity have become the new bottleneck and, increasingly, the most in-demand in the industry.”
From ideas to infrastructure
Modern marketing runs across more channels, markets and formats than ever before. Campaigns are no longer produced once and rolled out slowly. They are always on, continuously adapted, localised across regions and optimised in real time.
“Creative output has accelerated, but structure hasn’t disappeared,” says Tanya Lilley, talent acquisition lead at Brandtech+. “If anything, strong delivery roles have become more critical. Without experienced execution and delivery specialists, speed quickly turns into inconsistency.”
This pattern is increasingly visible across global marketing organisations. As teams mature, greater emphasis is being placed on operational leadership, workflow design and cross-functional coordination. The ability to manage complexity at scale has become a competitive advantage.
Evidence of a broader hiring shift
Hiring patterns offer a clear signal of this change. “At Brandtech+, recent hiring reflects this shift: of the over 100 permanent, fully remote roles opened across global client teams, a large portion are non-creative, spanning account management, project delivery, production and technical disciplines,” says Lilley.
“We’re not deprioritising creativity. We’re recognising that creative excellence at scale depends on quality execution and flawless organisation.”
She adds that many of the hardest roles to fill today are the ones responsible for keeping global workstreams moving, aligning teams across time zones and maintaining quality as volume increases.
This role mix reflects a structural shift in how marketing teams are designed. Rather than organising around siloed disciplines, companies are building integrated delivery systems: senior, cross-functional teams that can own output end to end.
Why execution is the new constraint
The industry’s long-standing obsession with ideas has often obscured a more practical truth. Most marketing failures are not caused by poor thinking, but by breakdowns in execution: missed deadlines, fragmented handovers, inconsistent localisation and fragile production pipelines.
As campaigns become multi-market by default, those risks multiply.
“Clients aren’t just buying ideas anymore,” says Gray. “They’re buying reliability, speed and consistency. That shifts demand toward people who can design systems, manage complexity and translate strategy into action.”
According to Gray, this demand is structural rather than cyclical. “Companies aren’t just hiring again. They’re redesigning roles around how work happens now, not how agencies used to operate.”
What this means for marketing careers
For professionals, the implications are significant. The fastest-growing opportunities in marketing are no longer confined to creative specialisms. Operational, technical and client-facing roles are moving to the centre of how marketing value is created and rewarded.
“This helps explain why experienced account managers, project managers and delivery leads are increasingly being recruited into global roles that previously did not exist,” says Gray.
“Distributed work models allow companies to access this talent without relocation, while offering professionals exposure to complex, international work.”
Lilley adds that the hiring patterns at Brandtech+ are not an anomaly. “They are evidence of a broader shift in global hiring, work design and talent demand across the marketing industry. Creativity remains essential, but it no longer sits alone at the top.”
Gray says, “As marketing continues to scale, the hottest jobs will belong not just to those who generate ideas the fastest, but also to those who can deliver them consistently and that may be the most consequential change reshaping the industry.”
Brandtech+ is the global creative production engine of The Brandtech Group, headquartered in New York with operations across five continents.
