VP of Marketing

The role

Nuclearn is hiring its first VP of Marketing. This is a function leader role, not a campaign manager role, and it's one of the more interesting marketing jobs in tech right now if you like the intersection of AI, a serious industry, and a real founder team to build with.

You'll own positioning, demand generation, conference strategy, lifecycle marketing, and the systems that connect all of it to revenue. Reporting to our CRO Phil Zeringue, you'll partner with the founders and Sales to make marketing a real source of pipeline and a meaningful contributor to ARR growth. You'll inherit one marketing contractor and build the function from there.

What makes this job different

Most marketing leaders haven't done what this job requires. Nuclearn sells AI products into nuclear operations: a slow-moving, high-stakes, regulated industry where buyers have decades of operational experience and reputation is the moat. The marketing motion that works in horizontal SaaS won't work here.

A Few Things To Know Up Front

• We don't run high-volume outbound, yet. Our buyers are technical, our deals are months long, and noise loses us credibility.
• We don't sell on hype. Our credibility comes from our founders being nuclear professionals out of Palo Verde, and from our products doing what we say they do. Marketing has to reinforce that, not undercut it.
• Conferences and field marketing are central. Nuclear is a relationship industry. ANS, Nuclear Energy Assembly, and a handful of others are where deals actually start.

If you've spent your career on volume-led playbooks, this won't be the right fit. If you've built marketing for technical, complex, long-cycle B2B and you're excited about an industry that matters, keep reading.

Why now

We've grown to 70+ nuclear facilities across North America and the U.K. with founder-led marketing and a contractor. That model got us here, but it won't get us to the next stage. ARR is a core company goal, our customer count is accelerating, and we need a marketing function that supports both new pipeline and expansion within existing accounts. You'll be building it.

What you'll own

Positioning and messaging. Make sure prospects "get it" quickly and Sales spends less time re-explaining fundamentals. Develop the website, use-case content, and proof assets that resonate with technical nuclear buyers. Lead with the value and outcomes Nuclearn delivers, not feature lists.

Conferences and field marketing. Turn conferences into a measurable pipeline engine. Define event selection criteria, build pre-event playbooks (meeting booking, exec outreach, partner coordination), run disciplined on-site capture, and own post-event follow-up. Build a multi-touch attribution model that respects how nuclear deals actually close.

Lifecycle and nurture. Design persona-specific nurture for sales cycles measured in months. Stay present and credible without being noisy. Run selective, targeted outbound where it makes strategic sense (event-triggered sequences, executive notes), not as a default motion.

Thought leadership and brand. Build a high-signal content strategy grounded in operator POV, technical insight, and customer outcomes. Increase founder and exec visibility through speaking, panels, and industry channels. Every piece of content should reinforce the trust we've earned.

Marketing operations and measurement. Lead HubSpot adoption, define campaign structure and attribution, and build dashboards leadership trusts. Sales should view marketing as leverage, not decoration.

First 90 days

• Produce a clear messaging architecture and a website improvement roadmap
• Stand up structured event follow-up workflows for the next industry conference
• Launch a core marketing dashboard that ties activity to pipeline
• Audit current campaigns and reallocate budget toward highest-leverage channels
• Establish your operating cadence with Phil, Sales, and the founders

About You

You've spent 10+ years in B2B marketing, with meaningful time in enterprise or regulated industries. You've built marketing for long sales cycles and complex buying committees, and you can combine field marketing, lifecycle, and product marketing into one coherent motion.

You think in pipeline and revenue, not impressions and MQLs. You're comfortable working without an SDR engine. You can talk to technical founders and technical buyers in their language without translating everything through marketing-speak.

You balance strategy and execution. At Nuclearn's stage you'll be running the strategy AND writing copy, sitting in pipeline reviews AND building the dashboard. That's the job.

You're comfortable with candor. You'll tell the founders when a piece of content isn't ready. You'll tell Sales when a lead isn't qualified. You'll tell yourself when a campaign isn't working. We say the hard things here, with facts and without spin.

Nice To Have, Not Required

• Experience marketing into energy, utilities, nuclear, aerospace, or other safety-critical industries
• Track record of transitioning marketing from founder-led to system-led
• Familiarity with compliance-sensitive environments (SOC 2, ISO 27001 adjacent)

You'll be in your element if...

We try to be honest about where people thrive here, because that saves everyone time. Some patterns we've seen:

• You're comfortable building without a playbook. A lot of what you'll do here, you'll figure out as you go. We're past product-market fit, but we're still building most of the systems around it.
• You're energized by fast cadence. The work moves fast. Customers are growing. Priorities shift. People who do well here lean into that pace rather than waiting for it to settle.
• You bring decisions, not just questions. Our managers expect you to come with "Here's what I'm going to do, unless you tell me otherwise," not "What should I do?"
• You want candid feedback. We tell each other the hard things, with facts and without spin. People who do well here find this energizing, not uncomfortable.
• You like reaching across function lines. Small team means everyone wears multiple hats. The boundary of your role is whatever the work needs, and that's a feature, not a bug.

How we'll know you're winning

Predictable marketing contribution to qualified pipeline. Clear, differentiated positioning. Strong qualitative feedback from Sales on lead quality. Improved mid-funnel engagement. Conferences ranked by pipeline influence, not anecdote.

How we work

Our founders are nuclear engineers from Palo Verde who built Nuclearn to bring AI to an industry that needed it, and to do it in a way that actually makes operations better, safer, and smarter. Our team now has 50+ years of combined nuclear experience between them, and we're the only AI company with that depth of domain expertise. Marketing's job is to extend that trust, not replace it with shine.

We're a values-driven company. Six values shape how we work, and three will be especially visible in this role:

Customer Wins. Their win is our win. Marketing that doesn't lead with customer value isn't marketing we ship.

Candor. Say the hard thing, facts only, no spin. This is rare in marketing and we mean it.

Excellence through Iteration. Move quickly, never carelessly. Marketing in a regulated industry requires both.

We're based in Phoenix and we're building a real HQ here. You'll be in the office with the founders, Sales, and engineering four days a week (Wednesdays remote). For a marketing leader, proximity to the people who built the product and to the deals being worked is a significant advantage.

A few practical notes

• $173,000 to $240,000 base salary, with equity participation and bonus
• Hybrid in our Phoenix HQ (≥80% in-office, Wednesdays remote)
• Occasional travel to industry conferences and events
• U.S. citizenship or permanent residency required for DOE export compliance

How we hire

Fast, respectful, and practical. Our goal is first conversation to decision in three weeks or less.

• 20-minute intro with Head of People or Hiring Manager to trade context and assess mutual fit
• Practical work sample: a focused marketing audit or strategy exercise tied to Nuclearn's actual situation
• Working session with the founders and Sales leadership on your approach
• Reference conversations

Nuclearn is an equal opportunity employer

Nuclear is an industry that has historically drawn from a narrow talent pool, and we think widening that aperture is part of how the industry moves forward. Nuclearn hires the best person for each role regardless of background, and we mean that as a practical commitment, not a legal line. Research shows that women, people of color, and candidates from non-traditional backgrounds are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. If you can do the work and the role excites you, apply — even if your path here doesn't look like the one we described. The best hires we've made often surprised us.

We don't discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.