How to Find Decision Maker Emails by Job Role (2026)
In account-based selling, you often know the company and the role you need to reach, but not the specific person. You want the CEO of a 50-person SaaS company, or the VP of Engineering at a target account, but you do not have a name to start with.
Role-based email lookup solves this. You provide a company domain and a role category, and the API returns the verified email of the person in that position along with their name, title, and LinkedIn profile.
How role-based lookup works
The Decision Maker endpoint at emailfinder.dev accepts two parameters: a company domain and a role category. The API identifies the person holding that role at the company, resolves their email address, and verifies it via SMTP in real-time.
Supported role categories include CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, Head of Engineering, Head of Product, Head of HR, and Head of Finance. These cover the most common targets for B2B outreach.
The response includes the verified email, the person's full name, their exact job title (which may differ from the category), and their LinkedIn URL when available. This gives you everything needed to write a personalized outreach message.
When to use role-based lookup
The primary use case is top-of-funnel prospecting for account-based sales. You have a list of target companies but have not yet identified the specific people to contact. Role-based lookup lets you go from a company list to a contact list in one step.
It is also useful when your primary contact at a company is unresponsive. Instead of giving up on the account, look up a different decision maker. If the VP of Sales is not responding, try the CEO or the Head of Marketing.
Recruiting teams use it to find hiring managers. If you are filling a role and want to reach the person who would manage the new hire, a role-based lookup for Head of Engineering or VP of Product gets you there directly.
Building a target account workflow
The typical workflow starts with a list of target company domains. This might come from your ICP definition, a competitor's customer list, a conference attendee list, or a manual research process.
For each domain, you call the Decision Maker endpoint with the role you want to reach. The API returns the contact or indicates not found. For successful lookups, you have a verified email ready for outreach.
At 5 credits per lookup and 1,000 requests per minute, you can process 200 target accounts per minute. A list of 1,000 companies takes about 5 minutes to enrich with decision maker contacts.
Multi-threading with multiple roles
The most effective account-based campaigns reach multiple stakeholders at the same company. Instead of emailing just the CEO, you contact the CEO, the VP of Sales, and the Head of Product with tailored messages for each role.
You can call the Decision Maker endpoint multiple times for the same domain with different role categories. Each call returns a different person (assuming the company has people in those roles). This builds a multi-threaded contact map for the account.
Multi-threading increases your chances of getting a response. If one person is too busy or not the right fit, another stakeholder may engage. It also signals to the company that you are serious about working with them, not just spraying generic outreach.
Combining with other endpoints
Role-based lookup works well in combination with the other emailfinder.dev endpoints. Start with the Decision Maker endpoint to find your primary contact. Use the Company Emails endpoint to discover additional contacts at the same domain. Use the LinkedIn Lookup endpoint to enrich contacts you find through social selling.
For example, you might use Decision Maker to find the CEO, Company Emails to discover 15 other contacts at the company, and then Person Email to look up a specific referral you received. Each endpoint serves a different part of the prospecting workflow.
Accuracy and coverage
Role-based lookup depends on the API's ability to identify who holds a specific role at a company. For well-known companies with public leadership teams, accuracy is high. For smaller or more private companies, coverage may be lower.
When the API cannot identify the decision maker for a requested role, it returns not found and no credits are charged. This typically happens with very small companies (where roles are not clearly defined) or very private companies (where leadership information is not publicly available).
Typical find rates for decision maker lookups range from 50-70%, depending on the role category and company size. CEO lookups tend to have the highest find rate because CEO information is most commonly public. Niche roles like Head of HR have lower find rates.
Personalizing outreach by role
The response includes the person's exact job title, not just the category you searched for. A CEO search might return someone with the title "Founder and CEO" or "Managing Director." A VP of Sales search might return "Chief Revenue Officer" or "Head of Sales."
Use the exact title in your outreach. Addressing someone by their actual title shows you did your research. It is a small detail that makes a meaningful difference in response rates.
The LinkedIn URL in the response lets you research the person further before reaching out. Check their recent posts, shared connections, and background to find personalization angles that go beyond name and title.