As a recruitment partner to North American tech companies, we continue to speak with hundreds of start-up and scale-up leaders each year about their teams, growth plans, and compensation strategies.
One of the most common questions we hear when kicking off a marketing search is: “What’s the market rate right now?”. To help answer that, we’ve compiled insights from real-world data, including conversations with candidates, active searches, and our annual salary survey.
Whether you're building out your team or considering your next move, this snapshot should help you benchmark compensation and understand where the market stands in 2025.
While the market for marketing leadership remains selective, there is strong demand for experienced marketers who can directly influence revenue outcomes. Companies are prioritizing hires who bring a performance mindset, especially those who can drive acquisition, conversion, and retention without significantly increasing spend.
With smaller teams and cautious budgets, efficiency remains a top priority. This has influenced both the structure of marketing orgs and how compensation is being assessed, with a stronger focus on impact rather than title.
Remote Work Trends
47% of marketing professionals work fully remotely. 53% are in hybrid roles.
Fully office-based roles are nearly nonexistent.
Gender Pay Disparity
At the pre-executive level, men earn approximately 5% more than women.
At the executive level, the gap increases, with men earning about 10% more than their female counterparts.
Equity Distribution
64% of executive marketers receive equity as part of their compensation, compared to 37.5% at the IC and manager level.
Bonus Structures
Average bonus as a percentage of base salary: IC (6%), Lead or Manager (7%), Head or Director (13%), VP or C-level (18%).
This data reflects total on-target earnings (OTE), including base salary and performance-based bonus or variable compensation. All figures are in Canadian dollars.
Median OTE by Role
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Average OTE by Role
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Equity remains a meaningful part of total compensation, especially at the leadership level.
We have excluded dollar-value estimates due to the wide variance in company stage, structure, and valuation.
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Bonuses are most prevalent at senior levels, though we are seeing more bonus structures across all levels.
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Marketing remains one of the most gender-diverse functions in tech. 58% of our marketing survey respondents identify as female. However, pay equity remains a challenge. The gender pay gap is narrower than in some other functions but remains consistent year over year.
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Marketing remains among the top functions for remote-first roles.
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This snapshot reflects verified data gathered from a combination of recent searches and our proprietary salary survey.
Because of this, our figures may reflect the upper end of the market.
We do not include dollar values for equity due to the complexity of evaluating early-stage or private company stock.
Salary transparency supports better hiring, fairer compensation, and stronger negotiation on both sides of the table. That is why we created our Salary Snapshot Series.
We base this on the four Ts:
Feel free to share this snapshot with your network or explore our other Salary Snapshot reports on artemiscanada.com.
Read more insights from our team.
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Founded by Kristina McDougall in 2013, Artemis has grown to become Canada’s most trusted boutique executive search firm for startups.
We recognize that our work takes place on the traditional lands of the Attawandaron, Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas of the Credit. We honour Indigenous stewardship and commit to embedding reconciliation into our work, holding ourselves and our clients accountable.
