Hire a GTM engineer, or build it in-house?
The honest comparison: salary vs. engagement, ramp time, and who owns the system after.
The full-time hire
- [$180k+] salary plus equity, before tooling and management time
- [2-4 months] to find, close, and onboard - the pipeline waits
- Senior enough to own the system means senior enough to be recruited away
- When they leave, the undocumented parts leave with them
The fractional engagement
- A senior engineer a few days a week, for a fraction of the salary
- Starts this week, not next quarter
- Built in your accounts, documented as it goes
- If the engagement ends, the machine stays - every workflow, prompt, table, doc
How to decide
Hire full-time when the system already runs and needs a daily operator, and when you can offer the scope and growth a senior hire stays for. Go fractional when the system does not exist yet, when the pipeline cannot wait a quarter, or when you are not sure the role is full-time yet. Many teams do fractional first, then hire into a machine that already works - the hire inherits a running system instead of a blank page.
What ownership means here
Either way, insist on this: the system lives in your accounts, not the engineer's head or their personal workspace. Every engagement we run is documented so a future hire, an agency, or your own team can pick it up without a handover call.