Why marketing and sales professionals who understand data, strategy and technology are in short supply in Brazil

Marketing and sales professionals who master data, think business strategy and also understand technology are in short supply in Brazil because the market trained these three kinds of knowledge in separate compartments, and only recently began demanding all three at once from the same person. Those who come from communications learned to tell a story and little about statistics. Those who come from data learned to run queries and little about business decisions. Those who come from technology learned to integrate systems and little about why that data matters to the sales operation. Finding someone who unites the three fronts remains the exception, not the rule.

The size of the shortage, in numbers

ManpowerGroup's Talent Shortage Survey shows that 80% of Brazilian companies report difficulty filling positions in 2026, above the global average of 72%. Marketing and sales appears by name among the hardest areas to hire for, alongside artificial intelligence, data literacy and information technology. The same survey points to São Paulo as the state with the greatest difficulty, 88%. On the technology side alone, Brasscom (the Brazilian association of information and communications technology companies) estimates about 500 thousand open positions in the IT sector against only 53 thousand graduates per year with the required skills, which pushes companies in every sector to compete for the same people.

The detail that changes how this number reads: the shortage is no longer only of those who know how to operate a tool. It is of those who can interpret the data, decide what to do with it and still operate the technology that supports that decision. Lacking any one of the three fronts already takes the professional out of the most sought-after band of the market.

The cost of operating without this profile

Without someone who brings the three fronts together, the marketing and sales operation falls into one of two recurring problems. In the first, the team has data people, but they deliver technically correct reports that leadership does not know how to translate into a decision. The number exists, but it changes nothing. In the second, the team has strategy people, but they decide by feel because nobody there knows how to extract or trust the available data. Both cases cost time and money in the same way: a delayed decision, an opportunity lost in the middle of the delay, and a hiring cycle that repeats because the right position never gets filled completely.

Three fronts that became a single requirement

Data

Knowing how to read a report is not the same as knowing why the number changed. A data-oriented professional understands the difference between correlation and causation, knows when a result is noise and when it is signal, and does not treat a percentage without a traceable origin as fact.

Strategy and business

Data without a business decision becomes a decorative chart. Those who only know how to run queries, without understanding the commercial reason behind the question, return technically correct numbers that nobody knows what to do with. The question that separates the two profiles is always the same: does this number change any decision?

Technology

The Go-to-Market Overview in Brazil 2026, produced by HubSpot, shows that 96% of Brazilian marketing professionals already use artificial intelligence in some way, and 35% already apply it specifically to analyze campaign performance. Those who do not keep up with this layer of technology lose the ability to do, in practice, what the rest of the market already does: automate collection, integrate systems and use AI to interpret a volume of data that no person can look at alone.

Why traditional education does not prepare for this

Marketing school trains for communication and creativity. A data course trains for statistics and tools. A technology course trains for systems and integration. Few programs teach the three together, and the result is a professional who masters one front and improvises on the other two. This explains why a good share of companies report difficulty both in hiring and in retaining this profile: those who already combine the three skills receive offers constantly, and leaving their current job becomes more advantageous than staying.

How to develop this profile, starting from within

ManpowerGroup's survey also shows that the strategy most used by Brazilian companies to deal with the shortage is not external hiring: it is upskilling and reskilling the team that already exists, cited by 44% of the companies interviewed, ahead of looking for new talent pools (25%) and flexibility of location and hours (23%). It makes sense: it is faster to teach data and technology to someone who already understands the business than to teach business to someone who only understands data or technology.

Two practical fronts help this development. One is organizational: getting the team off manual spreadsheets frees up the time that today goes to collecting and tidying data, leaving time to interpret it. The other is the direct use of technology in day-to-day work, such as connecting an AI agent to your own operation's data instead of continuing to export spreadsheets to make decisions.

Formal education also helps close this gap. Open School Conexorama, an open and free school of marketing, sales and AI, is a structured path to develop the three fronts at the same time, at no cost of entry.

Frequently asked questions about the data-oriented marketing and sales professional

Does this professional have a specific job title?

There is not yet a single, consolidated job title in the Brazilian market. It appears under names such as growth analyst, data-oriented performance marketing specialist or marketing and sales data strategist. The job title varies more than the requirement itself.

Does this replace the traditional data analyst?

No. The data analyst goes deeper into statistics and engineering with a rigor that the marketing professional does not need to have. The difference is that the data-oriented marketing and sales professional uses that knowledge in service of a specific business decision, not analysis for analysis's sake.

Is it possible to develop this profile without changing jobs?

It is, and it is the path most Brazilian companies are already using. Internal upskilling was the strategy most cited in ManpowerGroup's survey, ahead of external hiring.