Noah Adelstein

Intent Signals 101

International Growth @ Rippling & founder of The GTM Engineer Pod + Community

An overview about intent signals and why they are important in GTM Engineering

What are intent signals, and why do they matter?

From basic to sophisticated to complex signals

The 3 levels of intent signal quality

The underlying mechanics to find signals and store them most cost efficiently

How to find, store, and capture signals

Does this sound familiar? You’re expected to deliver more with less. Fewer people, tighter deadlines - and now AI is somehow your problem too. Your team depends on you for everything, and senior leaders have crazy expectations. You’re working harder than ever, but still feel like you’re not doing enough. You barely have time to think, let alone grow. And when things slip, you’re the one who has to explain. You don’t need another framework -you need a practical system that actually works. You’ll learn how to get your team moving without needing you in every step, how to build trust with leadership so they stop second-guessing you, and how to finally carve out time for your own growth. Together, we will:✅ Build a personal focus map that shows your blind spots and where to aim your efforts✅ Raise your team’s visibility - and your own - across the company✅ Create clear plans for each engineer, based on what actually motivates them✅ Connect your engineering work to business outcomes people care about I know you don’t have full days to spare. That’s why this course is built as a tight, practical program - no filler, no theory for theory’s sake. 6 super-focused sessions, each designed to give you tools you can use the next day. Here’s what we’ll cover: Session 1: Managing Engineers (Without Losing Your Mind)- The 3 drivers behind every engineer and how to spot them- Map your team using a simple grid, so you know what makes each person tick- Tactical ways to keep people motivated - without needing a new budget or promotion cycle- How to help your employees create a system that fits THEM (focused on day-to-day, not career growth with KPIs) Session 2: A Motivated Team That Delivers- Team meetings and focus days: two simple levers you’re probably - underusing.- The “Always Green” system: how to make sure you are meeting the executives' expectations- Tech debt + morale: match people to work they care about - and how to fix tech debt and morale at the same time.- The knowledge mapping method - how to measure your team as a whole and find the gaps to take your team forward Session 3: Your Own Growth- The EM Grid system: we'll create a map of where your current focus lies, and what are your blind spots.- The slow death of the hands-on EM: How to stay technical enough to be useful, without getting in the way.- How to avoid the ‘victim trap’ of engineering managers. Session 4: Building Visibility Across The Org- Getting taken seriously outside engineering: The simplest way to build trust with non-tech stakeholders.- Make some noise: Why it’s not enough to “just do the work” anymore - and how to make sure people actually notice.- Leadership trust: How to get senior leadership to take you seriously, know your name, and ask your input before making decisions that hit your team.- Other EMs: Why building real relationships with other EMs matters more than you think - and how to start. Session 5: Real Problems, Real Time- Decision Making 101: Recap of the approaches to solve problems from the best leaders in the world- We’ll focus on solving YOUR real challenges by applying the tools and tactics from the course. Session 6: Driving Real Impact- Product: How to stop launching features no one uses.- Business: Make your work matter to people outside your team.- Industry: Know your space well enough to be taken seriously.- PM partnerships: what a real partnership looks like and how to build one. Every day will have an optional 30 minute Q&amp;A session, to make sure you will be able to actually apply the lessons in your specific scenario.

Build a motivated team that’s trusted by leadership and runs without you.

Course syllabus

This course is aimed at active Engineering Managers. We won't cover getting promoted to that role, and neither job searching.

Directly Managing Engineers

You should have at least a few years of experience in the role you are managing (Software/data/QA etc). 

Not covering outsider challenges.

Technical background

If your events are recurring and at the same time, it might be easiest to use a single line item to communicate your course schedule to students

Tuesdays & Thursdays

Feel free to type out dates as your title as a way to communicate information about specific live sessions or other events.

May 7, 2022

Schedule items can also be used to convey commitments outside of specific time slots (like weekly projects or daily office hours).

Weekly projects

Course schedule

You are an Engineering Manager and you want to have a bigger say on things beyond your own team.

You have 2-10 years of management experience. You know the basics and you're ready to grow beyond the day-to-day and take the next step.

You manage 3-12 engineers, and don't have enough hours to do the kind of work you want to do.

Who is this course for

What you’ll walk away with:

You’ll use the EM Grid to build a clear snapshot of where your time goes - across work like growing your people, shipping projects, or building relationships - and at different levels (you, your team, the org). You’ll spot what’s missing and where to shift focus.

A personal focus map to spot your blind spots and redirect your time to what actually moves the needle

You’ll learn how to get leadership to notice the work your team is doing — without begging for credit or flooding Slack. Expect specific tactics you can use to build trust and make sure your team isn’t overlooked.

A system to raise visibility for you and your team - without chasing credit or cringe

You’ll learn how to map each engineer to what they actually care about - and use that to assign work in a way that drives motivation, delivers results, and takes A LOT off your plate.

A plan to motivate each engineer on your team in a way that drives results (and frees you up)

We’ll break down how to understand the product, business, and industry context around your specific product and company - and how to tie your team’s output to metrics business stakeholders company actually care about. This applies even if your team is “infra” or “internal”.

A method to connect your work to business outcomes in your specific scenario

Learn the system to always deliver high-impact results as an EM under pressure.

Anton Zaides

September 2025

October

A request lands in your inbox: “Can you research these leads and reach out with a personalized email?” GTM work often starts like this. Hours or days of data pulls, manual research, and copy-paste personalization. The creative spark is there, the capacity is not. Even when an experiment works, it waits for someone to wire it together so the team can actually scale it. This course turns that bottleneck into your edge. By the end, you will think and build like a GTM engineer. You will take a fuzzy ask and shape it into a small, testable workflow, connect the right signals, automate the last mile without losing the human touch, and prove impact with clean metrics. Two days later, the pilot is live, the team is looking at results, and you know what to scale next. Stakeholders see a repeatable way to measure ROI, the team ships ideas without waiting on a backlog, and you leave with artifacts that speak the language of decision makers. What you will be able to do &gt; Connect real buyer signals to concrete actions across your stack&gt; Personalize at scale while staying credible and empathetic&gt; Translate vague requests into scoped workflows with clear success criteria&gt; Stitch data and tools into a single path from trigger to touch&gt; Design fast experiments with guardrails, quantify lift, then decide what to keep or kill&gt; Package results into demos and narratives that unlock adoption and budget&gt; Build reusable workflows that teams adopt, not ignore&gt; Assemble a portfolio of shipped automations and clear ROI stories How you will learn &gt; Live workshops from GTM experts teaching key concepts and demoing workflows &gt; Ship something real every week to apply what we learn through carefully designed exercises. &gt; Leverage templates and office hours to adapt lessons to your own workflows.&nbsp;&gt; Demo projects, iterate through feedback, and document outcomes so value is obvious to teammates and leaders.&gt; Interviews with hiring managers and GTM leaders. What projects will cover &gt; Turning signals into context: capture the right inputs from sources like forms, events, and product usage, then enrich only what moves outcomes&gt; Research at scale, then human review: use software to gather last-mile details, keep humans focused on judgment, not copying and pasting&gt; Credible personalization: generate message variants that reference real context so outreach feels specific, not templated&gt; Outbound and follow-up flows: move from prospect discovery to sequencing in one chain, then iterate based on measured liftInbound triage and routing: qualify as data arrives, score using simple rules, trigger the next best action automatically&gt; Data hygiene and refresh: close CRM gaps, prevent duplicates, and update high-value records on the cadence your business needs The result You leave with a working system, not just notes. You have a repeatable method for rapid experimentation, artifacts you can demo, and a clear story of business impact. Most important, you become the person who shortens the path from idea to impact, with proof you can show and systems your team will keep using.

From manual GTM to AI-accelerated systems

You've used general purpose AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude

Basic AI tooling familiarity

You've started (or completed) the Clay 101 module on Clay University

Basic Clay exposure (optional)

RevOps, sales &amp; customer experience, or growth hackers looking to create, experiment or scale high-touch workflows

Operators passively or actively seeking a GTM engineer (or adjacent) role internally or externally&nbsp;

Growth leaders &amp; hiring managers looking to build a culture and team of ROI-driven experiments empowered by AI tooling

Who is this course is built for

What you'll become

You investigate every lead &amp; solve the mystery of what drives revenue. No touchpoint goes untracked. You know what really converts, how to trace every customer path, and quantify experiments through ROI calculations.

The Revenue Detective

You experiment relentlessly and find unconventional paths to scale. Status quo is your enemy. You're an experiment machine always testing something new, with a ruthless emphasis on speed to ship fast and learns faster

The Growth Hacker

You transform raw data into golden insights. Where others see spreadsheets, you see stories waiting to be told. You're the pattern whisperer who spots trends others miss, a SQL sorcerer whose queries work like magic, &amp; the insight generator who turns numbers into narratives

The Data Alchemist

You build systems that run themselves. Manual processes fear you, and efficiency is your middle name. You create self-running workflows, eliminate inefficiencies at scale, and literally give hours back to your teams by making growth sustainable.

 The Automation Architect

You optimize and connect every tool with surgical precision. You're an integration expert who connects any tools seamlessly, a stack optimizer who eliminates redundancies, and an efficiency engineer who makes everything run better.

The Stack Surgeon

Scale GTM with AI-assisted sales enablement, growth experimentation & workflow automation 

Clay

Yash Tekriwal

First GTM engineer and Clay professor

Thinkful

On Deck

Maven

Atrium Academy

Uniswap Foundation

Bhaumik Patel

10+ years building vocational training

Cohort 1

Does this sound familiar?Your team spends hours on CRM cleanup and manual research while outreach and routing lag. You know a GTM Engineer could fix the bottlenecks, but questions remain ‒🤔 "What exactly should a GTME do at my company?"🤔 "Where do I find these unicorn hires?"🤔 "How do I build systems without a technical background?" You've tried to figure it out yourself.Reading job postings from Notion and Ramp, stalking GTMEs on LinkedIn, attempting to retrofit your RevOps team. But every "GTM Engineer" seems different, and you're unsure if you're hiring a data analyst, an automation specialist, or a growth hacker. The clock is tickingWhile you deliberate, companies with GTM Engineering teams are automating 80% of SDR work, running 50+ experiments monthly, and closing deals you don't even know exist. The gap between manual ops and automated revenue engines is widening every day. Now imagine if you could✅ Hire Your First GTME in 30 DaysKnow exactly what to look for, where to find them, and how to close top talent using our proven interview rubrics and comp frameworks.✅ Build Revenue Systems That Actually ShipLaunch your first 5 automated workflows within weeks—from AI-powered lead scoring to intelligent CRM enrichment—without writing any code.✅ Build Systematic Revenue OperationsShift your ops team from reactive support to proactive revenue generation through documented workflows and measurable experiments.✅ Access a Private Network of GTM LeadersGet real-time advice from peers who have already built successful GTME teams.✅ Become the Executive Who "Gets It"Lead confidently in GTME discussions, from technical architecture, hiring criteria, and ROI measurement, to make informed decisions about your GTME function. 🏆 Why this course will give you an edge 🏆Skip 18 months of trial-and-error with battle-tested playbooks from leaders who've hired 50+ GTMEs and built systems driving $100M+ in pipeline.

A Practical Path to GTM Engineering

<ul><li>We'll have two weekly 2-hour sessions on Fridays.</li></ul> <ul><li>There will be two 1-hour office hour sessions for extra Q&amp;A (optional to attend).</li></ul> <ul><li>Between sessions, students are encouraged to reflect actively and experiment with recommended tools and workflows</li></ul>

Fridays 

RevOps Leader in Firefighting Mode – spending 80% time on data entry and ticket resolution instead of strategic initiatives

GTM Director Hiring GTMEs –waa nting structured hiring process with technical assessments and onboarding playbooks for GTM Engineers

CRO / VP Sales Owning Pipeline –Wants AI-powered activation (AI SDR, inbound), measured lift, and repeatable experiments

What you’ll get out of this course

&nbsp;📋&nbsp;Proven frameworks for building GTME teams from zero to scale🎯 Step-by-step roadmap from data foundation → enrichment → activation⚡ GTM arbiterage discovery system to find and capture unique revenue plays🔥 [Founders' Special] First 25 leaders get ongoing playbook updates

Complete GTM Engineering Playbook

💪 Job descriptions, scorecards &amp; interview loops from 50+ successful GTME hires📄 Role scorecards, interview banks, and take-home briefs with rubrics📊 Technical assessment templates to identify 1% talent 🧭 RACI across RevOps/Growth/CX built for scale

Battle-Tested Hiring & Team Building Toolkit

🚀 Production-ready automation workflows you can deploy immediately💰 AI SDR setup generating 80-100 meetings/month📈 Intelligent inbound routing, signal digests, and CRM enrichment automation🏗️ Experimentation templates to ship 50+ tests monthly, not yearly

Revenue Systems That Ship Week One

&nbsp;🤝 Private Slack with GTM leaders from Series B to public companies💡 Live implementation labs where we build workflows together (not just theory)📧 Direct access to GTME experts who've built GTME teams at scale🏅 Certification signaling org-level GTM Engineering readiness

Executive Peer Circle & Direct Support

Why, What, and How of GTM Engineering
Proven playbooks, complete hiring kit & exclusive peer circle of GTM leaders building GTME teams

HubSpot

Coca-Cola

Airbnb

Spotify

Jack Brown

Ex-Amazon Alexa, Featured in Venturebeat, MIT Press

Google

YouTube

Atlassian

Delta

Kish – The AI Guy

GoogleAI, YouTube Recommendations

Cohort 2

Does this sound familiar?You manage lists, fix CRM fields, and stitch tools—yet impact feels invisible. You want to become the person who ships AI-powered GTM workflows, not just cleans up after them.🤔 “What skills actually make a GTM Engineer?”🤔 “How do I ship a real workflow without heavy coding?”🤔 “What counts as a portfolio piece hiring managers respect?” You've tried to figure it out yourself —Watching YouTube tutorials on Clay, reading GTM Engineering blog posts, and tinkering with Zapier workflows. But without structured learning or real-world projects, you're piecing together fragments instead of building complete systems. Meanwhile, early GTM Engineers are landing roles at Ramp, Notion, and Anthropic. The opportunity window is closing —With 100+ GTME jobs posted monthly and companies desperately hiring, those who move first will command premium salaries and define this role's future. While you hesitate, others are transitioning from ops to engineering, doubling their compensation and impact. Now imagine if you could —✅ Ship AI-enabled RevOps production workflow(e.g., transcript-to-CRM, signal digests, reverse-IP activation) in your stack—measured in meetings booked or hours saved.✅ Speak the GTME Language Fluently.Confidently discuss data architecture, experiment design, and ROI measurement in interviews, backed by hands-on experience building actual systems.✅ Join an Elite GTME NetworkConnect with fellow bootcamp grads landing roles at top companies, sharing job openings, and referring each other for positions.✅ Land Your First GTME Role in 90 DaysGraduate with a certified credential, polished portfolio, and resume templates

<ul><li>We'll have two weekly 2-hour sessions on Fridays.</li></ul> <ul><li>There will be two optional 1-hour office hour sessions for extra Q&amp;A.</li></ul> <ul><li>Between sessions, students are encouraged to reflect actively, and experiment with recommended tools and workflows</li></ul>

Fridays

RevOps IC Ready to Upskill – Spends days on CRM cleanup and enrichment. Wants to automate workflows and move into strategic GTME work

Burned-Out SDR Seeking Tech Path – Tired of cold calling. Sees GTMEs earning 2x salary. Needs technical skills without a coding bootcamp

Marketing Ops Pro Building AI Plays – Creates campaigns manually. Wants to build AI agents and experiment systems like top tech companies

💪 Complete GTM systems you can showcase or deploy immediately🚀 AI SDR that generates 100 personalized emails in minutes📊 Lead scoring model aggregating intent signals across channels 🏗️ Automated CRM hygiene system saving 20+ hours weekly

Production-Ready System Templates

📋 Build Production-Ready Systems Master Clay, webhooks, and APIs to create data architectures ranging from 100 to 100K records. 🧩 Live build labs with step-by-step guidance 🧭 Structured reviews on your spec, data model, and measurement plan

GTM Engineering Skillset Mastery

🧰 GTME resume bullets, project write-ups, and interview stories&nbsp;🤝 Warm introductions to 5+ companies actively hiring GTMEs&nbsp;&nbsp;📄 "AI-enabled GTM Engineer" certificate of completion

Career Enablement

🤝 Private Slack with 100+ bootcamp grads sharing job openings 📈 Peer code reviews ensuring production-quality systems 🏅 Alumni spotlight program featuring your work to hiring managers

Community & Support

Land your 1st GTM Engineering role − no coding skills required 
The Why, What, and How of GTM Engineering

Lightning Lessons

Intent Signals 101