All the Ecommerce Job Roles You Need to Hire For

The Top Ecommerce Job Roles, Broken Down by Hierarchy

Go to the top

Somewhat paradoxically, company hierarchies aren’t set in stone – they differ across businesses, countries, and industries, so are hard to quantify. For the purposes of this guide, however, we’ve separated out the ecommerce job roles that follow into three camps:

• Executive-Level Managers (C-Suite)
• B-Level Executives (Middle Managers)
• Employees (Creatives, Laborers, and other Non-Managerial Staff)

Executive-Level Managers (C-Suite)

Executive-level managers (also known as C-level managers) will form your business’s C-Suite.

These are your ecommerce company’s biggest players: its head honchos when it comes to operations, finances, marketing, people, technology, and strategy. C-Suite members are the most senior employees of a company, and are usually responsible for the success and growth of entire functions or departments.

Founder/Director

What’s in a name?

Well, this one’s fairly straightforward – the Founder is, of course, the person that created the company.

In many ecommerce businesses, the Founder is also the Director – the individual elected to manage an enterprise’s activities, and ensure that all its financial and legal requirements are met.

If you’ve founded a company, but don’t have the time – or the inclination – to direct it yourself, you’ll need to hire someone for the role of Director. Since this person will, essentially, be in the most powerful and influential position in your company, it’s important to pick someone who shares your vision and plans for your ecommerce business’s future.

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Your CMO will sit at the top of your ecommerce business’s marketing tree: planning, developing, executing – and then optimizing – all your advertising and marketing initiatives. The CMO is in charge of ensuring that all marketing activities feed into key business strategies and long-term goals. A CMO might also commission market research in the form of focus groups or surveys, or monitor wider market trends to help the company stay ahead of the curve.

In the typical company hierarchy, they sit above the Head of Marketing, who reports directly into them.

Chief Technical Officer (CTO)

Just as a CMO’s realm is marketing, a CTO’s world is – you guessed it – technology.

As Workable’s CTO job description puts it, the chief responsibilities of this role are:

• Developing the company’s strategy for using technological resources
• Ensuring technologies are used efficiently, profitably, and securely
• Evaluating and implementing new systems and infrastructure

As a C-Suite position, the CTO’s role isn’t to get bogged down in the day-to-day drudgery, but to coordinate an ecommerce business’s utilization of technological principles, practices, and platforms from up high. It goes without saying, then, that it’s a crucially important cog in the machine of all expanding ecommerce companies!

Middle Management (B-Level Executives)

The ‘middle’ in ‘middle management’ refers to where these employees sit on the typical organizational tree – below the C-Suite and senior managers, but above the lower levels of operational staff. Essentially, they’re the meat in the corporate sandwich – so let’s unpack why this layer of ecommerce job roles is so important.

Digital Marketing Manager

Digital Marketing Managers are responsible for coordinating your ecommerce company’s marketing efforts across different online platforms. This could include:

• Search Engine Marketing: paying Google for ads to appear at the top of its results pages, when customers search for keywords relating to your brand or industry online.
• Native Advertising: creating marketing messages that match the function and form of the content they appear in, for example “Promoted Listings” or “Sponsored Content” on online articles, or recommended further reading that appears at the bottom of web content.
• Social Media Marketing: utilizing platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to promote products or services, and make money off social media.

And, to entrepreneur Tal Sheref – co-founder of online brand Condo Wizard – this is one of the ecommerce job roles you’ll need to recruit to grow your business.

“A Digital Marketing Manager has the skills to increase traffic and conversions to your business, which they’ll do by launching marketing campaigns across multiple digital channels.

“In addition, a Digital Marketing Manager will collaborate with your Developer and Digital Operations Manager to include various parts of your company in each campaign, enabling you to offer discounts, promotions, loyalty schemes, and incentives to your customers. In short, they’ll make your business known!”

These types of marketers tend to specialize in paid content. Usually, the Digital Marketing Manager’s counterpart is the Content Marketing Manager, a role which tends to focus on the organic, SEO-oriented side of advertising.

Customer Services Manager

Your Customer Services Manager will be in charge of coordinating and leading your team of customer service executives: managing performance, developing and implementing customer service policies, and strategizing new ways to measure satisfaction and improve services. They’ll also be working with the team to handle customer enquiries and complaints directly.

One job site summarizes the Customer Services Manager so:

“Any customer service manager’s main priority is to take care of customers and to provide them with the best possible experience. Whether that’s a Customer Services Manager in SaaS (Software as a Service) who may be working with a specific customer repeatedly for an extended period of time, or a customer service rep who focuses on one-off inbound requests from consumers, the end goal is always to offer the maximum possible value, while demonstrating empathy and expertise.”

For more info about which other positions will make up your ecommerce business’s customer services team, jump down to the ‘Ecommerce Job Roles by Function/Department’ section below.

Internet Sales Manager

An Internet Sales Manager’s responsibilities, as defined online, include:

• Overseeing your sales team’s daily activities, to ensure it hits its objectives and monthly quotas
• Analyzing sales-related issues, and providing corrective actions
• Qualifying leads, and then contacting them with product or pre-sales info
• Building positive, productive relationships with customers
• Explaining the features and benefits of your product to potential buyers
• Negotiating prices and completing online sales
• Remaining up to date on product knowledge and any ongoing promotions
• Developing best practices to boost sales and profitability
• Evaluating the performance of sales agents/executives, and providing feedback accordingly
• Scheduling and running sales meetings to discuss issues and provide recent updates

With sales being, essentially, the bread and butter of any ecommerce business, the role of Internet Sales Manager is a vital one. Not only will this person be in charge of driving online sales and cultivating customer relationships, they’ll also be responsible for ensuring the success and happiness of your sales team.

Employees

Finally, there’s the employee-level staff at your business. These roles won’t require the individual to manage anyone, or take on much senior responsibility, but they’re still skilled. These people are your creatives, your laborers, your developers, and your analysts. Basically, they’re everything you need to scale your ecommerce business’s operations – fast!

SEO Content Writer

Whether you want to build your brand with engaging, informational content, or create more commercial articles to deliver fresh, sales-ready leads, you’ll need a wordsmith at hand.

SEO Content Writers are in charge of writing blog content, ebooks, whitepapers, and marketing copy. They may also assist your sales and customer service teams with ad hoc requests, and get involved with other forms of lead or customer generation, such as your PPC (pay-per-click), social, or native advertising campaigns.

Your writers will also be in charge of ensuring that your brand’s content is optimized for the keywords most relevant to your business and industry. They’ll assist your PR team with composing the copy for link building campaigns, and writing up press releases to deadline.

Top Tip: Recruit Freelancers for the Day-to-Day Jobs

“In the online world, the search engine is king. No ecommerce business can thrive if its pages don’t get plenty of traffic –therefore, an SEO content writer is essential to vaulting your site up the search engine results pages.

“Writers will be responsible for optimizing all the written content on your ecommerce website. They use platforms like Google Analytics to track and improve the performance of products, categories, and other pages, and are also likely to be involved with link building.”

• Miranda Yan | Founder, VinPit

Web Developer

Web Developers are responsible for using technological platforms to help your business hit its targets, and for creating a stable, scalable infrastructure upon which to grow.

According to job site The Balance Careers, developers can expect to be held accountable for:

• Having expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and similarly relevant coding languages
• Creating and testing applications for websites
• Working with other teams – such as Brand and Design – to redesign elements of your ecommerce site’s platform
• Maintaining your website, and troubleshooting any issues that may arise

There’s more to it than that, of course, which is why you need to make sure you’re hiring web developers with a skill set that matches the needs of your business. Some developers, for instance, specialize in WordPress sites, while others are more design-oriented. Certain web developers will be more adept at getting the frontend of your site scrubbed up and sparkling, while others will be better at keeping your backend ticking along….

…so choose wisely!

Business Analyst

So, Business Analysts… analyze businesses? Well, yes – although it’s a little more complicated than that. We reckon that Mary K. Pratt and Sarah K. White of CIO sum up the particulars of the role nicely:

“Business analysts (BAs) are responsible for bridging the gap between IT and the business by using data analytics to assess processes, determine requirements, and deliver data-driven recommendations and reports to executives and stakeholders.

“BAs engage with business leaders and users to understand how data-driven changes to process, products, services, software and hardware can improve efficiencies and add value.

“They must articulate those ideas but also balance them against what’s technologically feasible and financially and functionally reasonable. Depending on the role, you might work with data sets to improve products, hardware, tools, software, services or process.”

Against this backdrop, Business Analysts operate at that crucial nexus where technology, finance, information, and operations meet. Needless to say, you’ll struggle to optimize, evaluate, grow, and – ultimately – analyze your business without them!

Ecommerce Job Roles, by Function/Department

Go to the top

Of course, you won’t need all the above roles when you’re just starting out. After all, what’s the use of a company hierarchy or structure – if it’s just you and a couple of friends filling orders from your basement?

Soon, however, you’ll want to start thinking about which roles you want to hire for – and, later, how to split these up by the function or goal they perform. Below, we’ve categorized the most crucial ecommerce job roles in 2021 by their department, to give you a good idea as to where to start.

So read on – we’re starting at the top!

Leadership

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” 

• Proverbs 29:18

The importance of good leadership is, quite literally, biblical – so establishing the makeup and structure of your C-Suite is a crucial first step in laying the foundations for a successful ecommerce business. Here are the main roles:

• Founder
• Director
• CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
• CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
• CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)
• CFO (Chief Financial Officer)
• COO (Chief Operating Officer)
• CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer)
• Departmental Heads

Tech

Technology (Tech) teams are becoming increasingly vital to modern ecommerce companies. They fulfill a wide range of functions to ultimately ensure that your ecommerce site looks good, stays live, and offers an excellent user experience (UX).

In an ecommerce setting, for instance, the Tech team might work on improving your site’s checkout experience: removing distractions, reducing the likelihood of shopping cart abandonment, and making it as quick and simple as possible for your customers to pay online. A Tech team might also ensure that any integration between your site and a third party – a payments platform, for instance – is seamless and straightforward.

Tech teams are also instrumental when it comes to maintaining your site – fixing bugs, creating or improving existing functionalities, and optimizing the look, feel, and efficacy of both your site’s front end (what the customer sees) and the back end (the section that you deal with and edit).

The exact nature and titles of jobs in tech differ between companies, and there’s often overlap between the kind of skill sets required and responsibilities expected. A few of the most common roles here are:

• Engineering Manager
• Product Manager
• Design Manager
• Frontend Developer
• Backend Developer
• Full Stack Developer
• Software Engineer
• UX (User Experience) Designer
• UI (User Interface) Designer
• UX Writer
• UX Researcher

Logistics

With all the complicated tech, new-fangled acronyms, and fancy job titles (Growth Hacker, anyone?) it can be easy for scaling ecommerce businesses to forget the fundamentals. That’s why the people working in your warehouse are so vital to the success of your operation as it grows – after all, what’s the use of taking more orders, if there’s no one on the ground actually filling them?

This is where order fulfillment comes in. While your den may have served as a makeshift storage space and warehouse when you were just starting out, pretty soon you’ll want something more… substantial.

Of course, a warehouse (also known as a fulfillment center) is no good without the right people. Here are some of the ecommerce job roles you’ll need to think about recruiting for your logistics team:

• Fulfillment/Warehouse Manager/Team Leader/Partner
• Logistics/Distribution Manager
• Fulfillment/Warehouse Supervisor/Specialist
• Fulfillment/Warehouse Officer/Operative/Executive
• Shipping and Receiving Associate
• Forklift Driver
• Material Handler
• Machine Operator
• Stocker/Packer
• Laborer

Customer Service

“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” 

• Walt Disney

The importance of a customer service team can’t be overstated. They’ll be the first point of contact for anyone looking to engage with your ecommerce business, whether the customer is:

• Requesting information about an upcoming product or service you offer
• Seeking clarification around the delivery time or window for their order
• Asking for a refund, or wishing to complain about a product or aspect of the service

Basically, your customer service department solves problems! In their day to day, they’ll deal with a lot – so you’ll want to hire empathetic souls with politeness, personability, and a penchant for patience. Here are couple of examples as to what their titles might be:

• Customer Services Manager
• Customer Services Officer/Assistant/Executive

Sales & Business Development

Unsurprisingly, selling is going to be vital to the success of your ecommerce business – so you’ll need to hire people that are good at doing it!

If marketers are responsible for generating leads, salespeople are the ones jumping on those leads – and, ultimately, converting them into customers. Sales teams will pitch your products and services to prospective clients, give demos, negotiate contracts, and – once they’ve got new business on board – be responsible for maintaining those relationships over time.

Similarly to tech, sales roles fall under a wide umbrella of monikers and meanings. Whether you call it business development or account management, you’ll want these particular employees to be confident conversationalists, have an excellent understanding of people, and – perhaps most importantly – have large, flashing dollar signs in their eyes! Here are some of the roles you’ll want to consider hiring for:

• Business Development Manager
• Sales Manager
• Internet Sales Manager
• Inside Sales Executive
• Sales Executive
• Business Development Executive
• Account Manager
• Sales Consultant
• Sales Associate

Marketing & Public Relations (PR)

“Make it simple, but significant.”

• Don Draper

Common conceptions of marketing teams tend to coalesce around cabals of enigmatic, ‘Don Draper’-esque advertisers, putting together whip-smart ads to stun the masses. While there’s a certain charm to the idea, the reality is a little different.

That’s because, in a modern ecommerce company, ‘marketing’ runs the gamut from paid ads on Google or social media platforms, all the way to SEO-optimized articles and marketing emails. Often, marketing teams will be subdivided further, with ‘organic’ marketing (this is anything that’s ‘free’ to generate, and includes blogs and web articles), distinct from ‘paid’ advertising (which costs you money to get eyes on your material).

Some common roles in the marketing sphere include:

• Digital Marketing Manager
• Content Marketing Manager
• Email Marketing (CRM) Manager
• SEO Content Writer
• Paid Social Manager
• Emerging Paid Media Manager
• Social Media Manager
• Performance Marketing Manager

You’ll also require a PR team to work closely with your marketers. Again, you’re probably falling back on the mental image of the PR archetype; a room full of spin doctors scheming to to dilute a scandal, or divert catastrophe. But again, that doesn’t quite hit the mark.

In reality, your PR team’s main goal will be to monitor mentions of your brand and company in the news, and ensure that the overriding sentiment toward your business in editorial coverage is broadly positive. Depending on your industry, that could involve hosting events, reaching out to relevant publications to secure backlinks, or offering up quotes from your in-house experts to popular media outlets.

Whereas marketing advertises your ecommerce company to the world, PR promotes it. So what kind of ecommerce job roles will make up your PR team?

• Public Relations Officer
• Brand Ambassador
• Event Manager
• Public Affairs Manager
• Media Relations Manager

Accounting/Finance

“In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

• Benjamin Franklin

With Ben’s words in mind, if you want to guarantee a long life for your ecommerce business, you’ll want to make sure that your taxes are in good order.

That’s where accountants come in. They’ll balance books, pay invoices, reconcile your expenses and earnings, and make sure the reporting on your profits and losses is accurate and up to date.

An Accounting team will also hold you accountable to your ecommerce business’s budget, conduct regular audits, and engage in risk analyses and financial forecasting, to give you a good idea of what you can expect from the future.

Some of the roles you’ll look to hire in this department are:

• Accounting Manager
• Business Analyst
• Financial/General Accountant
• CPA (Certified Public Accountant)

Human Resources (HR)

No matter how tech-oriented all ecommerce businesses have to be these days (after all, you make money through the internet!), it’s still people that will drive your company forward.

A Human Resources team, then, is composed of the people that will help make your people successful. HR departments hire, fire, train, and onboard your staff, and are typically also responsible for organizing benefits and perks. Most HR departments contain L and D (Learning and Development) sub-functions, too, which coordinate external training courses and educational programs to upskill your staff.

HR also usually comprises payroll (ensuring that your employees are paid correctly, and on time), as well as facilities (managing and maintaining any physical office space, and provisions for it).

As it grows, the average ecommerce business will require some combination (or variation) of the following HR roles:

• Payroll Manager
• Facilities Manager
• HR Manager
• HR Assistant
• HR Analyst
• Recruiter
• Talent Manager

Information Technology (IT) Support

Though they’re not to be confused with the Tech team above, the people in your IT support team will be of the ‘techy’ type. Your IT team will be responsible for maintaining the technological setup and systems your ecommerce business uses every day.

That includes repairing laptops, managing your business’s data and networks, coordinating user access to your systems and platforms, and keeping your telecommunications infrastructure running smoothly.

Some of the ecommerce job roles to hire for in this department include:

• IT Analyst
• IT Support Officer/Technician
• IT Coordinator
• Network Architect/Engineer
• Computer Systems Manager
• Computer Systems Analyst
• Telecommunications Specialist

Ecommerce Job Roles: The Essential Positions

Go to the top

Above, we’ve outlined some of the most vital roles, teams, and functions that all ecommerce businesses will need to fill.

But of course, which of these ecommerce job roles your company prioritizes will depend on your staffing needs, HR investment, and the resources at your disposal – not to mention your business’s size and budget.

That’s why below, we’ve broken down eight of the 21st century’s most influential ecommerce job roles by which business size they’ll have the most impact on.

And who’s better placed to explain the importance of these positions than the CEOs, founders, and directors of successful ecommerce companies themselves?

Read on to find out where to start – and who to start with!

Key Ecommerce Job Roles for Small Businesses

Content Writer

“Your writer (also known as a ‘Word Magician’!) will assist in the creation of your initial website and product messaging, as well as in putting together SEO-friendly content. They’ll also potentially write the copy for email marketing campaigns, scripts, and other product assets.

“Your writer will help you communicate your ecommerce business’s vision to the rest of the world, as well as assisting your sales and marketing teams in creating compelling copy that communicates your product’s benefits.”

• Paul Stein | CEO, Trusted House Painter

“Having a website is integral to ecommerce. Thus, there is always a skilled and competent web developer behind every ecommerce business!

“Basically, the web developer and their team are in charge of ‘taking care’ of the website, both in the front end and back end. The web developer is the one who’ll build your ecommerce site’s architecture, optimize its ecosystem, and ensure the smooth daily performance of your online platform.”

• Antti Alatalo | Founder, SmartWatches4u

“Pretty much the person who determines the user friendliness and functionality of your website. Every growing ecommerce business simply must have a team of web developers working for them!”

• Ben Wallington | CEO, Designerwear

“Ecommerce relies heavily on logistics. You can have all the SEO or digital marketing in the world, but if you can’t fulfill orders, your company will collapse. Order fulfillment requires warehouse staff.

“[Fulfillment officers] choose the necessary products for each order, pack them, and guarantee that they arrive on schedule. Warehouse workers are also essential for inventory management. They keep their colleagues or systems up to date on stock levels, in order to ensure that companies don’t oversell or undersell.

“Except for those who solely dropship, all ecommerce businesses will employ warehouse workers.”

• Alex Claro | VPN Analyst, CreditDonkey

“A Product Manager will lead the vision and strategy for your digital offering. What are your customers trying to achieve? How can you help them do it in a technically scalable and commercially viable way? These are the key questions a PM is always trying to answer.

“Typically, a PM will work closely with one or more developers – possibly alongside a product designer, data analyst and/or user researcher. No matter the size of your product team, however, the role has the same goal – to understand your customers’ problems and needs, and deliver impactful solutions for them.”

• Tim Kitching | Senior Product Manager, MVF Global

“A Customer Services Manager enables you to build out a dedicated customer services team, and thus accommodate your ecommerce business’s growing number of customers. The more customers you have, the more people you have to accommodate. You can never avoid complaints and inquiries!”

• David Clelland | Director, Infiniti Tracking

“As your ecommerce business grows, a substantial IT infrastructure becomes even more important. After all, many companies utilize a variety of software solutions, and have a large amount of hardware in their offices and warehouses.

“An IT technician is responsible for providing critical technical support. The more complicated the infrastructure, the more critical this technical assistance becomes.”

• David Fernandez | CEO & Founder, Capital Dealer Solutions

“With so many potential customers using Google or other search engines to research purchasing decisions, you’ll need a Technical SEO Manager who can work closely with your Web Developer or Product Manager; both so that your website can be found, and to increase your organic search traffic.

“A Technical SEO will help ensure that Google can efficiently and effectively crawl your website, without getting lost among increasingly large option sets for your products. They’ll also help you to optimize your landing and product pages, ensuring Google can understand your website better. This, in turn, promotes it higher to its users – and your potential customers!”.

• Cam Blair | Head of SEO, MVF Global

“You’ll most likely outsource this work at first. However, there will come the point when you’ll require the services of an in-house accountant.

“An accountant will handle your market speculation, financing, and Profit and Loss (P&L) reporting, and provide revenue and expense reports and listings. They’ll also collaborate with other positions and departments, such as the Director of Ecommerce, as well as the Inventory Manager.”

• Tal Shelef | Realtor & Co-Founder, CondoWizard

Ecommerce Job Roles: Final Thoughts

Go to the top

Choosing the right people is important. But to do that, you’ll need to place them in the right roles, too – meaning that settling on your ecommerce company’s hierarchy, team structure, and division of labor is a crucial task.

But remember, not all of the above roles will be right for your business. Many you won’t require until your ecommerce business is more established, while some you won’t need at all. The trick here, then, is finding the balance between keeping costs low, and pursuing your ambition – that all-important equilibrium of stability and scalability.

We’ll leave you with the thoughts of Damian Enderle, the founder of ecommerce company Adult Diapers 365, to demonstrate the point:

“I started with just two other employees – both relatives of mine. The three of us looked after finances, digital marketing, and the website, as well as customer service. 

“During our first few months, business was slow, so the three of us could efficiently handle the burden. However, as the business grew, we’ve now expanded to a team of 20 people, including: Content Writers, Human Resources Executives, Finance Associates, Business Development Executives, and Social Media Experts. Our company is now split into four departments: Finance, Business Development, Digital Marketing, and Human Resources.

“Speaking from my personal experience, the first few months are hard, with financial constraints and a shortage of talented employees. Therefore, you’ll need to focus on the jobs without which survival is not possible.

“At my company, we focused on finance and marketing – the main areas which would help actually generate sales for our ecommerce business. Therefore, your small organization should first prioritize your goals, and then hire people accordingly – remember, too many cooks spoil the broth!

“Later on, when the organization starts turning a profit, you should increase the size of your workforce. Focus more on digital experts and writers, who can actively contribute to the aggressive marketing of an ecommerce business – you want staff that are young, fresh, and creative!”

Liked this article, or have your own quotes about ecommerce job roles that you’d like to put forward? Drop us a line in the comments, and let us know your thoughts. Until next time!