For the past eighteen months, the revenue world has been buzzing about the rise of the GTM Engineer — the operator who plugs AI into every workflow, automates the repetitive, and gives sales, marketing, and customer teams a level of speed and intelligence once unimaginable.
But there’s another role emerging that may be even more transformative for go-to-market teams.
Not because it replaces what AI can do, but because it maximizes what humans can’t be replaced for.
Introducing: The IRL Engineer.
At Vendelux, we see this role rising across the highest-performing organizations — and the data behind it is clear: while AI drives digital efficiency, in-person interaction drives business outcomes. The IRL Engineer is the person who ensures those interactions happen at scale.
What Exactly Is an IRL Engineer?
The IRL (In Real Life) Engineer is the orchestrator of human connection across your company’s events, field activations, and business travel. Their mission is simple:
Maximize high-value, face-to-face meetings for everyone across the organization.
This person makes sure:
- Every event delivers meaningful customer and prospect interactions
- Cross-functional teams get direct exposure to the market
- Business travel includes curated relationship-building opportunities
- Recruiting leverages in-person chemistry
- The entire organization gets more “collisions” with the ecosystem around them
In short, the IRL Engineer turns the physical world into a strategic asset.
Why IRL Matters More Than Ever
AI has made digital work infinitely scalable.
But trust, insight, and relationships still happen best in person.
That’s why the companies winning today treat IRL as a force multiplier — not a nice-to-have.
Vendelux data across thousands of events shows:
- Meetings booked at events correlate directly with pipeline creation
- Organizations that systematize IRL interactions see higher deal velocity
- Cross-team in-person engagement accelerates product insight and innovation
- Prospects consistently rate IRL conversations as the most influential touchpoint in evaluation cycles
The IRL Engineer ensures these outcomes don’t happen by accident — they happen by design.
How the IRL Engineer Complements, and Often Surpasses, the GTM Engineer
The GTM Engineer has been crucial in the AI era. Their work improves efficiency, automation, and internal effectiveness.
But the IRL Engineer expands impact across the entire organization.
Here’s the difference in plain language:
- The GTM Engineer powers how we work.
- The IRL Engineer powers who we meet.
- The GTM Engineer elevates your digital ecosystem.
- The IRL Engineer elevates your human ecosystem.
Both matter — but only one unlocks a multiplier effect across sales, marketing, customer success, product, partnerships, and recruiting.
When every team gets more high-quality in-person interactions, your organization becomes smarter, faster, and more connected than the competition.
What Makes IRL Engineering So Powerful Now
Three major shifts have made this role not only relevant, but urgent:
- AI Has Automated the Work—Not the Relationships
Teams now have more time. The question is how to convert that time into impact. IRL interactions are the highest-ROI use. - Events Have Become the New Revenue Engine
Organizations are shifting spend toward conferences, field events, and owned activations. But ROI depends on meeting density — something the IRL Engineer manages deliberately. - The Best Talent and Partners Are Won in Person
People want to work with (and buy from) people they’ve met. Chemistry can’t be automated.
What Great IRL Engineers Do
The strongest IRL Engineers treat human connection like a system — not serendipity. They:
- Build playbooks that turn events into strategic meetings
- Align departments around shared in-person moments
- Use data (often from Vendelux) to predict who should meet whom
- Track and measure meeting outcomes and relationship strength
- Optimize travel schedules for maximum customer proximity
- Ensure executives and reps never walk into an event “cold”
They operationalize relationships.
The Future: Every Winning GTM Org Will Have an IRL Engineer
Call them a Field Strategist, Event Operations Leader, Chief Meeting Officer — or simply the IRL Engineer. The title will evolve. The impact will not.
At Vendelux, we believe this role will become standard inside modern revenue organizations for one simple reason:
AI accelerates operations.
IRL accelerates relationships.
And relationships drive revenue.
In 2025 and beyond, the companies with the strongest IRL strategy — and the person who owns it — will win.
