Career Explorer Management
Grows with AI
Marketing managers
Plan, direct, or coordinate marketing policies and programs, such as determining the demand for products and services offered by a firm and its competitors, and identify potential customers. Develop pricing strategies with the goal of maximizing the firm's profits or share of the market while ensuring the firm's customers are satisfied. Oversee product development or monitor trends that indicate the need for new products and services.
In the middle of the pack: more resilient than 53% of the 831 careers we score. AI exposure is very high (the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates it very high), and US jobs are projected to change by +6.9% by 2035, faster than average. The work leans on creative vision and emotional intelligence.
AI can help with many of the tasks, and demand is still growing. Being fluent with AI is the edge here.
- Median pay (2025)
- $166,790
- Job growth to 2035
- +6.9%
- Openings a year
- 34,000
- People doing it (2025)
- 422,000
- Usual route in
- Bachelor's degree
Where people already use AI for this work
- Communicate with others about operational plans or activities
- Evaluate programs, practices, or processes
- Analyze market or industry conditions
From Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025).
Work AI rarely helps with
- Develop business or marketing plans
- Direct organizational operations, activities, or procedures
- Analyze data to improve operations
What the work looks like
- Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.
- Use sales forecasting or strategic planning to ensure the sale and profitability of products, lines, or services, analyzing business developments and monitoring market trends.
- Identify, develop, or evaluate marketing strategy, based on knowledge of establishment objectives, market characteristics, and cost and markup factors.
- Direct the hiring, training, or performance evaluations of marketing or sales staff and oversee their daily activities.
- Evaluate the financial aspects of product development, such as budgets, expenditures, research and development appropriations, or return-on-investment and profit-loss projections.
From O*NET 31.0, US Department of Labor.
What the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects
- Fewer of these jobs, as consolidation of back office functions allow the same amount of output to be produced by fewer marketing managers.
- More of these jobs, as an expected increase in marketing activities in the sound recording industries should increase demand for marketing managers.
Careers using similar strengths, with a stronger outlook
- Entertainment and recreation managers, except gamblingGrows with AI, Index 68, +6.0%
- Social and community service managersGrows with AI, Index 63, +7.2%
- Emergency management directorsGrows with AI, Index 61, +3.9%
- Interior designersChanging shape, Index 56, +2.7%
Also known as: BD Director (Business Development Director), Brand Manager, Marketing Director, Product Manager, BD Manager (Business Development Manager), Market Development Executive, Market Development Manager, Marketing Communications Manager.
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Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; O*NET 31.0; Microsoft Research (2025); Anthropic Economic Index (2026); Eloundou and colleagues (Science, 2024); Felten, Raj and Seamans (2023). How we score. Updated 12 October 2026.