The Roles Everyone’s Hiring for — But Rarely Talks About: Hidden Talent in CIS iGaming & Affiliate

When people talk about the talent shortage in iGaming, the list is predictable: media buyers, SEO specialists, affiliate managers. The market knows these roles well — and competes hard for them with signing bonuses, relocation packages, and counteroffers.

But there’s another layer of specialists. They rarely appear on public job boards. They’re sourced quietly, poached from adjacent industries, discussed in private Slack threads and Telegram chats. And increasingly, they’re the real bottleneck to growth.

Product Analysts Who Understand the Funnel — Not Just SQL

Building a dashboard isn’t the challenge. Explaining why FTD drops while registrations grow is. Identifying where fraud hides within cohorts. Calculating LTV by traffic source when attribution is unstable and regulatory shifts impact tracking.

Formal education provides tools. iGaming demands context: short conversion cycles, geo volatility, regulatory constraints that reshape attribution logic overnight.

According to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, companies spend on average 6–9 months onboarding analysts before they operate independently — largely due to the gap between technical skills and industry-specific logic.

Meanwhile, the global iGaming market is projected to reach $107 billion by the end of 2025. Data volume — and the cost of misreading it — is growing at the same pace.

Many of these analysts don’t come from gaming at all. They come from fintech or e-commerce, where transaction-heavy funnels and performance accountability are already embedded in the culture.

As Yanina Radchenko, co-founder of the recruitment agency Partnerkin, notes:

“Teams aren’t just looking for someone who reports metrics anymore. They need analysts who can translate numbers into strategic decisions and directly influence growth.”

Compliance Managers Who Speak Marketing

Arguably one of the most undervalued roles today.

Regulatory pressure is intensifying. In Spain alone, gambling advertising fines reached €142.7 million in 2024. In the UK, the Gambling Commission issued £7.16 million in sanctions during the 2023–2024 financial year. In November 2025, regulators from seven European countries released a joint statement on coordinated enforcement against illegal gambling advertising.

This is no longer background noise. It’s structural risk.

The industry faces a familiar paradox: legal teams often don’t fully understand digital acquisition mechanics, while marketers don’t always grasp the nuance of license conditions.

What companies need is someone in between — a specialist who has read the UKGC Licence Conditions and can explain to a copywriter why “Win every day” isn’t just a weak hook, but potentially a regulatory violation.

The CIS market historically operated under softer regulatory regimes, so this expertise is scarce locally. But companies targeting Tier-1 markets are already building these capabilities internally — and paying well above average to secure them.

Radchenko adds:

“We increasingly see demand for hybrid roles. Not just a marketer, but a Growth Operations Specialist — someone who builds partner integrations, automates internal workflows, tests hypotheses, and creates internal tooling. This is no longer about campaigns. It’s about systemic growth.”

Technical Writers Who Actually Understand the Product

Affiliate content isn’t about churning out templated casino reviews.

It has to satisfy SEO requirements, pass partner moderation standards, and convert readers into depositing players — three objectives that often pull in different directions.

An SEO copywriter can handle rankings. A technical writer can structure information clearly. But someone who understands product logic and can adapt messaging for Latin America versus Poland — that’s rare.

Major affiliate networks report average hiring timelines exceeding three months for this kind of role. For context, 66 days to close a technical position in tech is already considered problematic.

This is one reason why hiring increasingly moves offline. Events like MAC have become spaces where companies don’t arrive with job postings — they arrive with specific operational pain points and find solutions through conversations rather than CV pipelines. That’s the real advantage of industry conferences.

Automation & No-Code / Low-Code Specialists

Affiliate businesses generate massive operational overhead: reporting, reconciliation with partner programs, rank monitoring, feed management.

Historically, it was either done manually or solved with expensive custom development.

Today, there’s a third category: specialists who build process automation in tools like Make, n8n, Zapier, adapting them specifically to affiliate workflows.

McKinsey estimates automation in digital marketing can save between 15% and 40% of working time, depending on process maturity. In lean affiliate teams, that difference shows up directly in P&L — not just productivity metrics.

CRM Specialists Focused on Retention — Not Just Email

In affiliate marketing, CRM is often reduced to newsletters.

But true retention in iGaming involves behavioral segmentation, event-triggered journeys tied to gameplay, churn prediction before the player disappears. It’s closer to product management than traditional direct marketing.

Historically, this expertise has lived on the operator side. But as larger affiliate groups build and monetize their own databases rather than simply passing traffic onward, retention becomes a strategic asset.

The market isn’t structurally ready for this shift yet — and there’s a clear shortage of specialists who understand it end-to-end.

As Radchenko emphasizes:

“AI tools are no longer experimental. Automation isn’t an advantage anymore — it’s a requirement. Companies that started implementing AI earlier already see measurable competitive gains. Practical AI expertise is extremely valuable right now.”

What These Roles Have in Common

You won’t find them neatly labeled on job boards.

Companies either describe them vaguely, hire through personal networks, or grow them internally — a slow and expensive path.

The CIS talent market hasn’t fully learned how to package these roles yet, even though the shortage is already tangible inside the industry.

That’s where opportunity opens up — especially at conferences like MAC, where among 5,000 attendees, the right conversation can replace months of recruitment effort.