VP, Marketing & Customer Experience

Vice President, Marketing & Customer Experience

The Opportunity

Gilson is looking for a commercially minded, customer-focused leader to help with the evolution of how we engage, grow, and serve customers around the world.

The Vice President, Marketing & Customer Experience will lead Gilson's integrated customer growth strategy, connecting brand, demand generation, digital commerce, customer data, and customer success into one cohesive engine. This role goes well beyond traditional marketing.

We are looking for a leader who understands scientific customers and laboratory environments, knows how to translate customer insight into commercial growth, and can build the systems, capabilities, and teams needed to strengthen the entire customer journey, from first awareness through adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy.

As a member of the senior leadership team, this individual will serve as a strong voice of the customer and help Gilson continue its evolution from a historically product- and engineering-led organization to one that combines exceptional products with an equally strong, customer-centered commercial experience.

What You'll Lead

Be the executive voice of the customer

Bring a deep understanding of scientific customers, workflows, purchasing behavior, adoption barriers, and value drivers into strategic business decisions.

Help ensure that decisions regarding portfolio, investment, go-to-market strategy, service, digital capabilities, and customer experience start with a clear understanding of what customers need and value.

Build a more customer-centric organization

Create stronger connections between Gilson's leaders and customers through Voice of Customer programs, customer research, direct customer engagement, and meaningful customer metrics.

Turn customer insight into action across Marketing, Sales, Product, Service, Applications, IT, and regional teams.

Strengthen the Gilson brand

Own Gilson's global brand strategy and positioning.

Build awareness, trust, differentiation, and preference within our target scientific markets while ensuring our brand clearly communicates the value Gilson delivers to customers.

Build a disciplined demand-generation engine

Develop an integrated global demand-generation strategy that converts priority audiences into qualified opportunities.

Partner closely with Sales to establish clear funnel definitions, lead management, nurturing, attribution, conversion measurement, and closed-loop learning.

Success will be measured not simply by marketing activity or lead volume, but by pipeline contribution, conversion, customer acquisition, and revenue impact.

Transform CRM and customer data into commercial tools

Help make CRM the operating backbone of the customer lifecycle.

Establish business ownership for customer data, lifecycle processes, segmentation, installed-base visibility, dashboards, and customer insights.

Partner closely with IT while ensuring these capabilities are designed around business and customer needs.

Accelerate digital commerce

Build e-commerce into a meaningful commercial and customer-experience channel.

Improve digital merchandising, conversion, repeat purchasing, and self-service while identifying opportunities to better monetize Gilson's installed base through consumables, accessories, service, and other recurring customer needs.

Build Customer Success

Establish a focused Customer Success capability designed to improve onboarding, adoption, time-to-value, customer health, retention, and expansion.

Clearly define how Customer Success partners with Sales, Service, Applications, Product, and other teams to create a seamless customer experience.

Lead globally while enabling regional success

Establish global strategies, platforms, standards, and measurement while enabling strong regional execution.

Partner with commercial leaders across North America, Europe, and other key markets to improve campaigns, events, channel activation, and field programs.

Build the growth operating model

Create a clear, measurable growth framework across Marketing, Sales, Product, Service, Applications, IT, and regional organizations.

Establish shared priorities, governance, decision rights, and performance measures while redirecting resources from lower-value activities toward the capabilities and programs that create the greatest impact.

What We're Looking For

We are looking for an experienced commercial and marketing leader who has worked close enough to customers to understand how scientists evaluate, purchase, adopt, and continue using complex products and solutions.

The strongest candidates will bring:

• Significant leadership experience in life sciences, laboratory technology, scientific instrumentation, diagnostics, scientific software, medtech, or another technically complex B2B market
• Deep understanding of scientific customers, laboratory workflows, purchasing journeys, adoption barriers, and customer value drivers
• Experience leading multiple elements of marketing, demand generation, CRM, digital commerce, customer analytics, and/or customer lifecycle management
• A demonstrated ability to connect marketing investment to measurable commercial outcomes such as pipeline, revenue, retention, recurring revenue, customer lifetime value, and expansion
• Experience strengthening brand positioning, awareness, differentiation, or market preference
• Experience working with CRM platforms, customer data, installed-base data, funnel analytics, segmentation, and lifecycle management
• Experience improving customer retention, service or consumables attachment, repeat purchasing, adoption, or expansion
• Strong partnership with Sales and experience working across both direct and distributor/channel go-to-market models
• Experience operating across multiple geographies, ideally including North America and Europe
• A track record of building or transforming capabilities without relying on large teams or unlimited budgets
• Experience influencing senior leadership and helping traditionally product- or engineering-led organizations become more market- and customer-driven

The Leader We're Looking For

Commercially minded

You see marketing and customer experience as growth levers, not support functions. You understand how brand, pipeline, customer experience, retention, and recurring revenue ultimately connect to enterprise value.

Customer obsessed

You want leaders in the organization hearing directly from customers, and you are comfortable challenging internal assumptions when customer evidence tells a different story.

A builder

You enjoy creating what does not yet exist, whether that is a Customer Success capability, lifecycle model, CRM discipline, digital commerce strategy, or a new way of measuring customer health.

Strategic and hands-on

You can participate in a leadership discussion about growth strategy in the morning and work through a funnel dashboard, campaign strategy, customer journey, or organizational issue that afternoon.

Data driven

You are comfortable establishing metrics, identifying gaps in customer data, evaluating performance, and using evidence to make investment decisions.

Collaborative

You know that the customer experience cannot belong to one function. You build strong partnerships across Sales, Product, Service, Applications, IT, Finance, and regional organizations.

Pragmatic

You know how to prioritize. Rather than launching dozens of initiatives, you identify the few capabilities that will create meaningful business impact and build them well.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business Administration, Life Sciences, Communications, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
• MBA or other advanced degree is preferred but not required

How We'll Measure Success

Success in this role will ultimately be reflected in measurable business and customer outcomes, including:

• Stronger brand awareness, preference, differentiation, and trust
• Growth in qualified pipeline and improved funnel conversion
• Increased visibility into customers and Gilson's installed base
• Improved CRM adoption and customer-data quality
• Increased digital-commerce revenue and repeat purchasing
• Faster customer onboarding and time-to-value
• Improved customer adoption, retention, and expansion
• Increased consumables and service attachment
• Stronger customer lifetime value and recurring revenue
• Greater use of customer insight in leadership and business decisions

Why Join Gilson?

This is not an opportunity to simply inherit and operate an established marketing organization.

It is an opportunity to build the next generation of Gilson's customer growth engine.

The Vice President, Marketing & Customer Experience will have the opportunity to influence how Gilson understands its customers, goes to market, builds its brand, uses customer data, develops digital channels, creates recurring revenue, and ultimately delivers value throughout the customer lifecycle.

For a leader who enjoys building, transforming, and creating measurable commercial impact in a scientific environment, this is an opportunity to leave a meaningful mark on the business.