Sales Executive Hiring Trends: What 1,298 Job Postings Reveal

Since late November 2025, I've been tracking every executive sales job posting I can find. VP Sales, SVP, CRO, EVP of Revenue. The dataset now sits at 1,298 postings across 9 weeks, with 704 disclosing salary information. That's enough data to start seeing real patterns in who's hiring, what they're paying, and what they actually want.

This isn't a survey. Nobody self-reported anything. These are live job postings pulled from major boards and company career pages, analyzed weekly and published through The CRO Report newsletter. The data covers posting volume, compensation ranges, skill requirements, industry breakdowns, seniority distribution, and the red flags that keep showing up in job descriptions.

Here's what the numbers say about the sales executive hiring market heading into 2026.

Weekly Posting Volume: The Holiday Dip and January Recovery

Executive sales hiring doesn't move in a straight line. The weekly data makes that obvious.

According to The CRO Report's weekly tracking of sales leadership job postings, SaaS companies account for 68% of all VP Sales openings in 2026, with cybersecurity and fintech leading growth.

Week	Postings	Avg Base Range	Salary Disclosure %
2025-W48 (late Nov)	232	$175K - $253K	50.1%
2025-W49	96	$161K - $242K	64.9%
2025-W50	47	$180K - $242K	45.2%
2025-W51 (late Dec)	97	$198K - $311K	63.8%
2026-W00 (New Year)	22	$141K - $183K	38.6%
2026-W01	73	$145K - $236K	72.3%
2026-W02	89	$167K - $254K	65.9%
2026-W03	37	$191K - $250K	23.3%
2026-W04 (late Jan)	11	$161K - $227K	36.7%

Week 48 (late November) was the high-water mark at 232 postings. That's consistent with companies trying to lock in hires before year-end budget cycles close. Then volume fell off a cliff. By the New Year week, just 22 postings went live. That's a 90.5% drop from the peak.

January brought partial recovery. Weeks 1 and 2 climbed back to 73 and 89 postings respectively, which tracks with the typical Q1 ramp as new headcount budgets open up. But the last two weeks of January slowed again, with 37 and 11 postings. Whether that's a data lag, a hiring pause, or early signal of reduced demand is something we'll know more about in February.

The salary disclosure rate bounced around, too. It peaked at 72.3% in the first full week of January and dropped to 23.3% by week 3. Lower disclosure tends to correlate with higher-seniority roles and smaller companies that aren't subject to pay transparency laws. The weeks with the lowest disclosure rates also skewed toward fewer total postings, so sample size matters here.

What Companies Are Looking For

Skill and keyword analysis across 1,298 postings reveals what companies actually care about when they're hiring executive sales talent. The top five signals, ranked by frequency:

Keyword/Skill	Postings	% of Total
Scale	591	45.5%
GTM (Go-to-Market)	488	37.6%
AI/ML	411	31.7%
Data-Driven	341	26.3%
SaaS	262	20.2%

"Scale" leads at 45.5%. Nearly half of all executive sales postings mention it, which tells you that companies aren't hiring sales leaders to maintain the status quo. They want someone who's built a team from 10 to 50, or taken revenue from $20M to $100M, or expanded into new markets. The word appears so often it's almost a prerequisite rather than a differentiator.

GTM at 37.6% reflects the shift in how companies define the VP Sales role. Ten years ago, the JD said "manage a sales team." Now it says "own the go-to-market strategy." The scope has expanded. Companies want leaders who think about marketing alignment, product-led growth, channel partnerships, and customer expansion alongside the core sales motion.

AI/ML at 31.7% is the most interesting signal. Nearly one in three executive sales postings now references artificial intelligence or machine learning. That doesn't mean companies expect their VP Sales to train models. They want leaders who can sell AI products, use AI tools in the sales process, or articulate an AI value proposition to enterprise buyers. If you're not conversant in how AI affects your buyers' businesses, a growing number of companies will screen you out.

Data-Driven at 26.3% and SaaS at 20.2% round out the top five. The data-driven requirement connects to the broader trend of revenue operations maturity. Companies have invested in their data infrastructure and now want sales leaders who'll actually use it. SaaS at 20.2% remains significant but continues declining as a standalone differentiator. It's becoming table stakes rather than a distinguishing qualification.

Compensation Trends: A 10.1% Decline in 9 Weeks

The average max base salary across all executive sales roles has declined 10.1% over the 9-week tracking period. In late November 2025, the average max base sat at $253K. By the last week of January 2026, it had dropped to $227K.

A few possible explanations.

• Seasonal compression. Q4/Q1 transition typically brings a mix of roles. Late-year postings tend to be urgent backfills at senior levels with higher comp. Early-year postings include more planned hires across a wider range, which pulls averages down.
• Company stage mix shift. If the January cohort includes more Seed/Series A companies and fewer Enterprise/Public companies, average comp will naturally drop. We're tracking this breakdown weekly to see if the mix is driving the decline.
• Actual market correction. Companies may be posting lower ranges because they can. If the talent market has loosened for executive sales roles, employers don't need to stretch. This would be consistent with the layoff activity that ran through late 2024 and 2025.

The weekly salary data shows the pattern clearly. Week 51 was an outlier with a $311K average max, driven by a few high-comp postings in a low-volume week. Remove that outlier and the decline is smoother but still present.

For context, the average low end of the base range has been more stable, fluctuating between $141K and $198K. The compression is happening at the top of the range, not the floor. Companies are keeping their salary bands but pulling the ceiling down.

Where the Hiring Is Happening: By Company Stage

Not all executive sales hiring is equal. Where a company sits in its lifecycle changes what the role looks like, what it pays, and what kind of leader they need.

Company Stage	Postings	% of Total
Enterprise / Public	195	27.7%
Series C / D	79	11.2%
Series A / B	38	5.4%
Series B / C	30	4.3%
Late Stage	27	3.8%
Seed / Series A	14	2.0%

Enterprise and Public companies dominate at 195 postings, accounting for 27.7% of roles with stage data. That's not surprising. Large organizations have the budget for ongoing executive recruiting, the headcount plans to justify VP-level hires, and the brand recognition to attract candidates. They're also the companies most likely to post on major job boards rather than relying solely on executive recruiters.

Series C/D comes in second at 79 postings. These are companies in growth mode with real revenue and real funding. They're typically hiring their second or third VP Sales, or upgrading from a founder-led sales motion to a professional revenue organization. The comp at this stage tends to be competitive because they're fighting Enterprise/Public companies for the same talent while offering equity upside as a differentiator.

Series A/B and B/C combined account for 68 postings. The earlier the stage, the fewer the postings. That makes sense. A Series A company usually has one VP Sales role to fill, and they often fill it through networks rather than public postings. The ones that do post publicly tend to be outside major tech hubs or looking for a specific industry background.

Seed/Series A at just 14 postings represents the smallest slice. But these roles matter. They're the highest-risk, highest-potential positions in the dataset. A VP Sales or CRO at this stage is building everything from scratch, and the job market data shows that titles at this stage are inflated relative to what the role actually involves.

Seniority Breakdown: VP Dominates Everything Else

The seniority distribution across 704 roles with comp data tells a clear story about where the market is concentrated.

Seniority Level	Roles	% of Total
VP	636	90.3%
SVP	37	5.3%
C-Level	26	3.7%
EVP	5	0.7%

VP-level roles make up 90.3% of the dataset. That concentration is worth understanding. The VP Sales title has become the default for any executive-level sales hire that isn't C-suite. Companies that 10 years ago would've posted a Director of Sales role now call it VP. The title inflation cuts both ways: it makes VP-level candidates easier to recruit, but it also means the range of responsibility under "VP Sales" is enormous.

SVP at 37 roles (5.3%) typically signals a company with multiple VPs reporting up. These roles sit between VP and C-suite, usually at companies with $100M+ in revenue where the organizational complexity justifies the layer. SVP compensation tends to run 15-25% above VP for equivalent company stages.

C-Level at 26 roles (3.7%) covers CRO, CSO, and Chief Commercial Officer titles. The CRO title has been migrating down-market, showing up at Series A companies where it functionally means the same thing as VP Sales. At larger companies, true CRO roles carry broader scope and distinct comp packages. Our CRO salary breakdown covers this in detail.

EVP at 5 roles is essentially a rounding error. The EVP title in sales is rare and typically reserved for very large organizations with complex matrixed structures. Most companies skip this level entirely.

Industry Breakdown: Healthcare and Tech Are Tied at the Top

Industry tagging across 1,298 postings shows where the demand for executive sales talent is concentrated. Postings can tag to multiple industries, so the numbers sum to more than 1,298.

Industry	Postings
Healthcare	720
Tech	719
Education	626
Financial Services	589

Healthcare leads by a single posting over Tech: 720 to 719. That near-tie is meaningful. Healthcare's lead reflects the continued expansion of health tech, digital health platforms, and healthcare IT spending. These aren't traditional pharma sales roles. They're SaaS and services companies selling into health systems, payers, and life sciences organizations. The buyer complexity in healthcare demands experienced sales leadership, which drives the VP-level hiring.

Tech at 719 is the industry you'd expect to see dominating executive sales hiring. It's broad, covering everything from infrastructure software to consumer platforms. The AI boom has kept tech hiring steady even as other sectors pulled back, and many of the AI/ML-tagged postings (411 total) overlap with the tech industry category.

Education at 626 is the most notable number on this list. EdTech companies have been building enterprise sales teams as they move upmarket from self-serve to district and state-level deals. That motion requires VP-level hires who understand consultative selling, long procurement cycles, and stakeholder management across complex buying committees.

Financial Services at 589 rounds out the top four. FinTech, WealthTech, InsurTech, and traditional financial institutions are all hiring sales executives. Regulatory complexity in financial services creates a natural moat for experienced sales leaders who understand compliance requirements and can navigate multi-month deal cycles with risk-averse buyers.

Tools Companies Require

When companies specify tools in an executive sales posting, they're telling you something about how they run their revenue org. Here's what showed up most often:

Tool	Mentions	% of Postings
Salesforce	180	13.9%
Outreach	65	5.0%
HubSpot	48	3.7%

Salesforce at 180 mentions (13.9%) is the only CRM that shows up at meaningful scale in executive-level postings. That doesn't mean every company uses Salesforce. It means companies that care enough about their CRM to mention it in a VP Sales JD are overwhelmingly Salesforce shops. HubSpot appears in 48 postings, largely at smaller companies and in the Seed through Series B range.

Outreach at 65 mentions reflects the growing importance of sales engagement platforms at the executive level. Companies mentioning Outreach typically want a VP Sales who's familiar with sequencing, multi-channel outreach strategy, and the data that engagement platforms generate. It signals a company that's invested in sales tooling and expects their leader to leverage it rather than ignore it.

Worth noting: 86% of postings don't mention specific tools at all. At the executive level, companies generally care more about leadership ability and strategic thinking than tool proficiency. But when they do specify tools, it's a signal about their operational maturity and expectations for how the new hire will run the team.

Red Flags in Job Postings

Certain phrases appear repeatedly in executive sales postings. Some of them are neutral. Others are signals that the role, the company, or the expectations might not be what they seem.

Phrase	Frequency	% of Postings
"Fast-paced"	248	19.1%
"Competitive comp"	198	15.3%
"Self-starter"	85	6.5%

"Fast-paced" at 248 Mentions

Nearly one in five postings uses this phrase. At the executive level, "fast-paced" is redundant. Every VP Sales role is fast-paced. When a company feels the need to call it out, they're often describing something more specific: short tenures, frequent reorgs, or an expectation that you'll do the work of three people with the resources of one. Not always. But often enough to warrant a follow-up question about average tenure for the last two people in the role.

"Competitive Comp" at 198 Mentions

This phrase correlates heavily with roles that don't disclose salary. Of the 198 postings using "competitive comp," the majority fall in the non-disclosing group. The logic is circular: if the comp were truly competitive, posting the number would be a recruiting advantage. Calling it "competitive" without showing the numbers usually means it's competitive relative to the company's internal budget, not relative to the broader market.

"Self-starter" at 85 Mentions

At 6.5%, this one is less common but more pointed. At the VP Sales level, every candidate is a self-starter. When companies use this phrase for executive roles, it often means limited infrastructure, limited support, and an expectation that you'll build your own systems, hire your own recruiters, and generate your own pipeline while also leading the team. It's a signal that the company hasn't invested in the support structure that typically surrounds a VP Sales. That can be an opportunity or a trap, depending on what stage you're looking for and how much runway the company has.