Chief growth officer salary · base, bonus and package, 2026
What a chief growth officer earns, in base, bonus and package
A chief growth officer salary runs from £130,000 to £220,000, with a median of £160,000, in Ultimate Asset’s 2026 survey of UK emerging-media businesses.
That is the only UK survey we found that names the seat.
Intelligent People puts a VP of Growth at an average of £150,000 on its 2025–26 placements.
Company size, sector and how much of the growth number the seat owns move the pay more than the title does.
Base is only part of the package: bonus, pension, employer’s National Insurance and often equity sit on top.
When you hire a chief growth officer through us, we send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
How a brief runswhat we undertake
- 01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
- 02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
- 03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
- 04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
- 05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief
Shortlist3–5
In the press
Fast Company 16 leaders on when fractional C-suite hires make sense · 24 Jun 2026
Leaders disagree on when a fractional hire makes sense and when a seat needs a full-time owner. Growth spans several teams, so read it before you commit to a permanent chief growth officer and the salary that goes with one.
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to hire a chief growth officer
Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with Chief Growth Officer candidates, their day rates and availability.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We scope the role and the days a week
- 03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
- 04Fractional, interim and permanent briefs
Pick a day that suits · live availability
On the board · last 3 months
Growth leadership jobs on the board
No Growth leadership roles on the board in the last three months. Showing fractional executive roles instead.
- FractionalSyndicatedFractional People Director
People Puzzles Ltd · Cambridge
Rate not statedCambridge - FractionalSyndicatedFractional CFO
KeelCFO · England
Rate not statedEngland - FractionalSyndicatedFractional CFO
fin-house · London
£700–£1,000/dayLondon - FractionalSyndicatedFractional General Counsel
Ffern · London
est £1,000/day1 d/wk - FractionalSyndicatedPerformance & Development Lead (Fractional)
Unity Advisory · London
Rate not stated3 d/wk - FractionalSyndicatedFractional CFO
Amitours · United Kingdom
Rate not statedUnited Kingdom - FractionalSyndicatedFractional CISO (Contract / Project Based)
Cambridge Spark · United Kingdom
est £1,500/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicatedHead of Medical Compliance, Governance & Diligence (Fractional)
CNX Therapeutics Ltd · Greater London
est £1,000/dayGreater London - FractionalSyndicatedFractional Product Practice Leader - 9 Month Contract
Tails.com · London
est £1,000/day2 d/wk
Growth roles on the board
Fractional Quest is a fractional recruitment agency: send a Chief Growth Officer brief and we come back with a shortlist of three to five vetted candidates.
01/ the role
What a chief growth officer does, and what sets the pay
A chief growth officer owns the company’s growth number: how customers are found, converted, kept and expanded.
The seat sits on the executive team and reaches across marketing, sales, product and customer success.
Below it, a head of growth usually runs the experiments and the funnel.
The title is newer and rarer than CMO or CRO, so few salary guides list it.
Ultimate Asset’s 2026 survey is the exception, and it covers emerging-media businesses: creator, social-first and digital media companies.
Read its figures as one sector’s view, then check them against the neighbouring seats below.
Seniority inside the growth function sets the pay first.
Ultimate Asset puts a growth director at £85,000–£130,000 (median £105,000), a head of growth at £90,000–£140,000 (median £115,000) and a chief growth officer at £130,000–£220,000 (median £160,000).
Intelligent People’s placement data puts a head of growth at an average of £100,000 and a VP of Growth at an average of £150,000.
Scope comes next.
A seat that owns marketing alone is paid like a marketing chief: Robert Half’s 2026 range for a CMO runs from £110,250 to £183,750, median £147,000.
A seat that also owns sales targets and product-led growth is a bigger job, and the package has to reach candidates who have run all three.
02/ scope
How to set the pay when you hire a chief growth officer
1. Scope the seat before the salary
Write down which teams, budgets and product surfaces the seat can change, and the one number it answers for: new revenue, net revenue retention or active customers.
A seat that only advises the marketing, sales and product leads is a smaller job than the title suggests, and should be paid as one.
2. Choose the route
A permanent appointment suits a business that needs one owner for growth every day.
If you need C-suite growth judgement for part of the week, hire a fractional CGO instead.
If the problem sits inside one team, hire for that team: see head of growth jobs for the functional seat.
3. Set base, bonus and equity together
A growth seat is judged on a number, so tie the bonus to it and write the measure into the offer.
In a growth business, part of the package is often equity: HMRC’s Enterprise Management Incentives are the tax-advantaged share option scheme most smaller companies look at first.
4. Test range, not one discipline
Most candidates come up through marketing, sales or product.
Ask for evidence from all three, and pay for the range you need, not the discipline they came from.
Membership of the Chartered Institute of Marketing or the Institute of Sales Professionals is one signal among several.
What we do on a growth brief
We recruit permanent, fractional, interim, part-time and temporary growth leaders, and non-executive directors.
We send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, and every candidate goes through our five-stage vetting first.
03/ the board
What the board holds.
A read of the roles on the board on this page, counted as they stand: how each is engaged, whether the posting gives the days and the rate, and where the work happens.
On this board, last 90 days · 9 roles · fractional executive
Engagement
- Fractional9
Seat
- CFO3
- CHRO1
- General counsel1
- HRD1
- CISO1
- Other1
- Other seats1
Days a week
- Stated in the posting4
- Not stated5
Day rate
- Verified rate1
- Estimated (est)4
- Rate not stated4
Work arrangement (as the job feed classifies it)
- Remote2
- Hybrid5
- On-site2
Newest posting on the board: 6 Oct 2026.
Postings per week on this board, last 90 days
9 postings on this board in the last 90 days, counted by the week each was published.
04/ the route
Fractional, interim or permanent?
Four taps. The answer names the route for the seat and the page that covers it.
The route · Fractional
A fractional chief growth officer.The work fills part of the week, so buy the days it needs.
A fractional chief growth officer holds the seat on agreed days for as long as the seat is needed, and works for other clients on the rest.
The route · Interim
An interim chief growth officer.The work fills the week, and it has an end: a programme, a cover, a transaction.
An interim chief growth officer takes the seat full time for that stretch and hands it over when it is done.
The route · Interim, then permanent
Interim now, a permanent chief growth officer after.The seat is full time and long term, and the need is now.
An interim chief growth officer holds it while the permanent search runs, so the seat is not left empty.
The route · Permanent
A permanent chief growth officer.A full-time seat that sits at the table for years is a permanent hire.
There is time to run a search, so run one.
05/ rates by stage
Chief growth officer salary by source and seat
Permanent pay as each publisher states it. Ultimate Asset publishes the lowest, highest and median salary from its 2026 survey of UK emerging-media businesses. Intelligent People publishes an average and a typical range from its placements, July 2025 to July 2026. Robert Half publishes starting salary projections (base). The ONS figures are gross annual pay for full-time employees in the wider occupation group. Ultimate Asset, Intelligent People and Robert Half are recruiters.
06/ economics
What the salary costs the business, beyond the base
A salary is not the whole cost of an employee.
For 2026 to 2027, employer’s National Insurance is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year (HMRC rates and thresholds).
Under automatic enrolment, the employer must pay at least 3% into a workplace pension; in most schemes that is on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 a year (GOV.UK).
Many schemes pay more.
On Ultimate Asset’s £160,000 median, employer’s National Insurance comes to £23,250 a year (15% of the £155,000 above £5,000, our arithmetic).
The 3% pension minimum on qualifying earnings adds about £1,320 (our arithmetic).
That is about £184,600 before any bonus, benefits or equity (our arithmetic).
The bonus is pay too.
HMRC treats a cash bonus as earnings, with PAYE tax and Class 1 National Insurance deducted through payroll, so budget employer’s National Insurance on the bonus as well as the base.
07/ vetting
How we vet chief growth officers
What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.
- 01
Qualification screen
Verify Chief Growth Officer tenure, sector context and stage fit.
SOURCING - 02
Mandate fit
Match to your situation — stage, board dynamics, timing.
MATCHING - 03
Reference deep-dive
We take references ourselves, from recent past clients — real outcomes, not titles.
VERIFY - 04
Shortlist
Three to five candidates with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5
08/ chief growth officer salary uk
Chief growth officer salary UK: what each benchmark measures
The chief growth officer salary UK figures come from different places.
Ultimate Asset’s £130,000–£220,000, median £160,000, is a recruiter’s survey of one sector, emerging media.
Intelligent People’s VP of Growth average of £150,000 comes from its own placements.
Neither covers every sector or region.
For an official view, the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings reports employee earnings by occupation.
It has no code for a chief growth officer; under the Standard Occupational Classification, the nearest group is 1132, marketing, sales and advertising directors.
For full-time employees in 2025 (provisional), the middle half of that group earned £65,527 to £134,962, with a median of £94,135.
The group is far broader than this seat, so treat it as context for the function, not a benchmark for the C-suite seat.
09/ chief growth officer salary london
Chief growth officer salary London, and why no source splits it
No source we can cite publishes a chief growth officer salary London figure.
Ultimate Asset and Intelligent People give UK figures only, and the ONS group is national too.
Start a London offer from the national ranges above, and ask each candidate for their current package.
On every shortlist we send, each candidate’s pay or day rate is set out, so you can see where the London market sits for your brief.
10/ cgo vs cmo pay
Chief growth officer or CMO: how the pay compares
In Ultimate Asset’s survey, a chief growth officer’s median of £160,000 sits just below a CMO’s £170,000 in the same emerging-media businesses.
Robert Half’s national median for a CMO is £147,000, and Intelligent People’s CMO average is £187,500.
The two seats are paid in the same band; scope decides where in it an offer lands.
See CMO salary for the marketing chief’s full figures.
If the growth seat is really a marketing seat with a new title, benchmark it there.
11/ the other routes
Salary, day rate or retainer: the other ways to pay for the seat
Read this sectionClose this section
A permanent salary buys one owner for growth every day, with notice on both sides.
A fractional chief growth officer works part of the week on a day rate or monthly retainer; an interim is paid by the day for full-time cover.
No UK source we can cite publishes a day rate for the seat, so each candidate on our shortlist states their own.
For this salary spread across working days (our arithmetic, not a market rate), see fractional chief growth officer salary and interim chief growth officer salary.
A fractional cost is the day rate times the days worked.
See fractional chief growth officer jobs for the part-week route.
12/ questions
Chief growth officer salary FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a chief growth officer.
Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5
Bring the brief. We architect the team.
A shortlist of 3–5 with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.
