• 5+ years in pre-sales, solutions consulting, lifecycle/CRM strategy, or marketing operations, including hands-on time running or architecting lifecycle programs, not only selling into them
• Real working experience across multiple ESPs (SFMC, Iterable, Cordial, Braze, Klaviyo, Attentive, or similar). We value depth in one and fluency in several more than certification in a single platform
• Fluency with the modern stack: how ESPs, CDPs, personalization engines, and the warehouse connect, including where identity, consent, and data freshness live and what breaks when they don’t
• Command of the craft: journeys vs. campaigns, channel strategy, and deliverability fundamentals, plus the brand judgment to know whether generated content would survive a brand review
• Discovery skills that surface process pain and turn it into a business case, proven in competitive, multi-vendor evaluations
• Bonus points if you’ve lived through an ESP migration, defended a platform decision to a CMO, CFO, or security review, are comfortable with SQL, or have a strong point of view on where lifecycle marketing is going