As I’ve been sketching out this idea of Marketing Platform Engineering (MPE), a natural question comes up: where does a team like this sit in the org chart? With marketing? With engineering? Somewhere in between?
There’s probably not a single “right” answer, but here’s where my thinking has landed so far: MPE should live inside engineering. I’ve experienced first hand what happens when MPE teams live inside marketing, and I’m not convinced that’s to the benefit of either the marketing team or the MPE team.
Why Engineering?
Marketing Platform Engineering is first and foremost engineering work in service of marketing outcomes. That distinction matters, because where a team sits determines how its work is valued and how sustainable it becomes.
Shared Standards, Shared Strength
MPE builds production systems: CMS architectures, experimentation frameworks, analytics pipelines. To be effective, those systems need to be designed, reviewed, and maintained with the same rigour as any other engineering work. Living inside engineering ensures security, performance, and scalability aren’t afterthoughts.
Collaboration, Not Siloes
Marketing is the primary stakeholder, but marketing doesn’t exist in isolation. Campaigns connect to product surfaces, sign-up flows, and onboarding experiences. Sitting within engineering keeps MPE close to the conversations and roadmaps that shape those touch points, so integrations are intentional and efficient rather than fragile bolt-ons.
Credibility and Leverage
Placement inside engineering signals this is a first-class platform function, with the mandate to advocate for long-term investments. The kinds of investments that extend beyond near-term campaign goals, ensuring marketing’s impact compounds over time. That identity matters. It unlocks trust, budget, and partnership.
Modern marketing is already deeply technical. SEO, CRO, and ops teams run complex systems every day. MPE builds on that sophistication by aligning production systems with engineering standards. That way, MPE can maintain its own roadmap and standards, while staying close enough to marketing to understand its rhythms and respond effectively.
At its best, MPE is the partner function — close enough to marketing to anticipate its needs, and close enough to engineering to build sustainable, scalable systems that serve both.
What Would It Take for MPE to Work?
Org placement is one piece, but the environment matters just as much. I believe an MPE team need a few things to really succeed:
Early Involvement
They need to be brought into conversations early, not handed tickets after decisions have been made. Late involvement usually means patchwork additions: “just get it working in time for launch.” That might work once, but it builds fragility. With early context, MPE can design systems that serve both the immediate campaign and the long-term roadmap, so marketing moves quickly now and in the future, without sacrificing stability.
Their Own Roadmap
If MPE is only a request queue, it will never get ahead. To deliver compounding value, MPE needs to own a roadmap, one shaped together with marketing, balancing urgent requests with platform investments.
For example: fixing a one-off workflow bug might take a day, but investing that same time in a reusable workflow engine could save weeks across multiple campaigns. These kinds of wins are less likely to happen without a roadmap co-prioritized with marketing. Ownership ensures the space to pursue platform-level bets while still meeting campaign needs that marketing helps define.
This is why placement matters. When MPE sits inside engineering, it gains the credibility and leverage to protect that roadmap. Marketing remains the primary stakeholder, but MPE has the authority to invest in the long-term systems that ultimately accelerate marketing’s work.
Built on Collaboration, Not Tickets
Designers, SEO specialists, CROs, and growth marketers need to collaborate with MPE as partners. Otherwise, the team gets boxed into doing surface-level implementation instead of building the platforms that really accelerate marketing. It’s a subtle irony: when MPE is framed only as a request channel, its ability to deliver real leverage is limited. Collaboration as partners unlocks the speed stakeholders actually want. Tickets keep everyone stuck in the weeds.
Balancing Context and Ownership
Even though MPE focuses on marketing’s needs, the systems they build don’t exist in isolation. A CMS for editorial publishing connects to product pages. A workflow for campaign tracking connects to onboarding flows. An analytics pipeline connects to customer portals. To avoid fragmentation, MPE has to mesh tightly with the rest of engineering and stay close to marketing, so the seams don’t show and customer experiences feel whole.
That’s where my thinking is at the moment: MPE as a partner to marketing, but a home inside engineering.
I’ll admit, this is all theorization based on my experiences and the patterns I’ve seen around me. I’m working it out in public, and so far, this is my working model, which I’m sure will evolve with more practice and feedback. But exploring these questions feels worthwhile, because naming and shaping this kind of work is an important step in making it something real and impactful.
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