TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Clay’s Kareem Amin on the rise of the GTM engineer

Two years ago, most companies didn’t have a GTM engineer. Now the role is showing up across tech, with practitioners using AI and automation to build revenue systems that once required multiple people, tools, and manual processes.

What changed — and what does it mean for the way companies find customers and grow?

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin will take the AI Stage for “The GTM Engineer: How AI Created Tech’s Next Big Job Category.” He’ll trace how AI has changed the traditional go-to-market stack and helped create a new discipline in its place, giving attendees a look at what AI-native GTM looks like in practice and how it’s changing company growth.

AI is giving go-to-market teams new ways to research prospects, work with data, personalize outreach, and automate workflows that once moved between separate tools and teams. As those capabilities converge, companies are rethinking not only their GTM technology, but who builds and manages the systems behind growth.

If you’re building a company or rethinking how your team approaches sales, marketing, and growth, this is a new role worth understanding. Secure your Disrupt pass and see where GTM engineering fits into the next generation of go-to-market. Get a second pass at a 50% discount, and more savings for groups of four or more.

What does a GTM engineer actually do?

Traditional go-to-market work can involve hours of researching accounts, cleaning data, qualifying leads, preparing outreach, and moving information between systems. GTM engineering uses AI, data, and automation to turn more of that work into repeatable systems.

Clay coined the role in 2023. Its own GTM engineering guide describes GTM engineers as practitioners who build automated revenue workflows rather than executing individual GTM tasks by hand. The company says roughly 100 GTM engineering job listings are now appearing each month, including roles at companies such as Cursor, Lovable, and Webflow.