cd /news/ai-products/great-question-yc-w21-is-hiring-seni… · home topics ai-products article
[ARTICLE · art-83676] src=ycombinator.com ↗ pub= topic=ai-products verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Great Question (YC W21) Is Hiring Senior Demand Gen Manager

Great Question, a Y Combinator W21-backed AI customer research platform, is hiring a Senior Demand Gen Manager to own the sales qualified lead (SQL) number and build a demand engine across organic search, AI search, content, and paid acquisition. The role requires 5–8 years of B2B demand generation experience and an AI-native approach to workflows.

read5 min views2 publishedAug 2, 2026
Great Question (YC W21) Is Hiring Senior Demand Gen Manager
Image: Ycombinator (auto-discovered)

User research on autopilot.

Great Question is the all-in-one AI customer research platform for understanding your customers. Our platform enables teams to recruit participants, run research, and share insights – all in one place. Backed by world-class investors and trusted by industry-leading teams like Gusto, Experian, Canva, and Brex, we’re building the future of customer research.

We believe AI is a multiplier for creativity, speed, and scale. Everyone on the team is encouraged to lean into AI, not just to be more efficient, but to push boundaries and unlock new possibilities. Whether you’re writing, designing, coding, or analyzing, we expect you to explore how AI can elevate your craft.

Our culture is built on high trust, high agency, and high emotional intelligence. If you’re looking for a place where your voice matters, where work is fun, and where you're empowered to do your best - join us in redefining user research 🚀

This role owns one number: SQLs.

You'll own the demand engine that generates a predictable stream of high-intent leads, and you'll be accountable for their quality through to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

Specifically, you'll own:

SQL attainment — building the demand engine that consistently delivers qualified opportunities.

Channel strategy — deciding where the next dollar and the next hour should go across organic search, AI search (AEO), content, gated assets, referrals, directories, events and paid acquisition.

Execution at scale — leveraging contractors, automation and AI to execute more programs than a traditional one-person demand generation team could.

What you'll do

Build and execute demand generation programs across organic search, AI search, content, partnerships, gated assets, referrals, directories, events and paid acquisition.

Take product marketing assets and messaging and turn them into repeatable lead-generation systems—gating content, distributing it through the right channels, repurposing it for social, newsletters and AI search, and continuously improving performance.

Segment and target the practitioner audiences we sell to—researchers, designers and product managers—so we attract the right buyers, not simply more buyers.

Partner closely with Product Marketing to move quickly from hypothesis → launch → measurement → iteration.

Work alongside our Growth Lead and GTM Engineer to build AI-assisted workflows for enrichment, personalization, content production, routing and automation so execution scales without linear headcount.

Measure the funnel rigorously—MQL → SQL → SQO conversion, cost per qualified lead and channel ROI—and make data-driven decisions about where to invest, where to optimise and what to stop.

How the role fits

We're intentionally a lean marketing team. Each person owns a distinct stage of the funnel with clear accountability.

Product Marketing

Creates the positioning, messaging and assets.

Demand Generation (this role) Turns those assets into qualified demand and owns lead quality through to SQL.

Growth Lead

Qualifies SQLs into SQOs and pipeline.

Success depends on tight collaboration. You and our Growth Lead own the same SQL number from different sides of the handoff, supported by a shared SQL definition and response SLA.

What we're looking for

Must-have

5–8 years in B2B demand generation or growth marketing, ideally within SaaS.

You've personally owned a pipeline, SQL or qualified lead target—and delivered against it.

You think in revenue, conversion rates and pipeline, not marketing vanity metrics.

You've built and operated multi-channel demand programs end to end, continuously improving performance based on data.

You're AI-native in practice. You've built workflows where AI materially increased output or reduced execution time, and you can explain exactly what changed. (We'll ask.)

Strong channel judgment—you know where to double down, where to experiment and where to stop investing.

Comfortable operating in a lean environment where success comes from systems, contractors and automation rather than building a large team.

Strong cross-functional communication and the ability to align Product Marketing, Sales and Operations around shared outcomes.

Experience building marketing automation systems using tools such as HubSpot, Cargo, Ahrefs or Smartlead.

Experience marketing technical products to practitioner audiences such as UX Researchers, Designers or Product Managers.

Success in the role

Within your first 12 months, we'd expect to see:

SQL targets consistently achieved.

Repeatable demand programs operating across multiple acquisition channels.

AI and automation meaningfully increasing execution capacity.

Clear visibility into channel performance and economics.

A demand engine that scales faster than headcount.

Compensation

Competitive on-target earnings (OTE), benchmarked to your experience and location.

70% base salary / 30% variable compensation.

Variable compensation is earned quarterly against SQL attainment, scales with performance, and is uncapped.

A culture of customer obsession and curiosity

Opportunity to shape and scale a critical business function

Remote-first culture with high trust and high autonomy

Annual team retreats and virtual events

Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI integrations that matter

Competitive compensation & equity

Generous PTO, health benefits, and learning stipend

Great Question is committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination or harassment. We expect every member of the Great Question community to do their part to cultivate and maintain an environment where everyone has the opportunity to feel included, and is afforded the respect and dignity they deserve.

Decisions related to hiring, compensating, training, evaluating performance, or terminating are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees. We examine our unconscious biases and take responsibility for always striving to create an inclusive environment that makes every employee and candidate feel welcome.

Great Question is a customer research platform that makes it easy to do research with your own customers - whether it’s customer interviews, surveys or prototype tests - and share what you learn with your team.

Founded by serial entrepreneurs Ned Dwyer & PJ Murray, we’re backed by Y Combinator and on a mission to democratize research.

We launched our beta in February 2021 with a bang - customers like Adidas Runtastic, Linktree & MainStreet all use and love our product.

── more in #ai-products 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @great question 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/great-question-yc-w2…] indexed:0 read:5min 2026-08-02 ·