The influence of the thermally-induced Marangoni stresses on the falling and spreading dynamics of a droplet surrounded by another liquid phase is numerically studied. A water droplet is released in a three-dimensional (3D) domain filled with oil. The droplet descends, comes at an apparent resting position above an oil film close to the bottom surface, and eventually wets the solid surface when the underneath film ruptures. A linear vertical temperature gradient is applied in the solution domain (with the bottom surface as the cold side) which imposes a surface tension gradient across the oil-water interface. The Marangoni source term is added to the momentum equation coupling the momentum and the energy equations. It is assumed that the dynamic contact angle changes according to the Kistler relation during the spreading. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is used to capture the interface between the phases. The solver is validated for both the falling and spreading phases. During the buoyancy-driven falling regime, the droplet retains its spherical shape at the low Reynolds number O(1) and finite Bond number O(0.001). It is revealed that the spreading rate of the droplet is a decreasing function of Marangoni number (Ma). Unlike the isothermal systems, where the bottom side of the droplet becomes slightly flattened at the resting stage, the Marangoni stress imposes an upward force on the droplet which elongates the shape of droplet in the temperature gradient direction. Consequently, the ultimate spreading radius at the equilibrium state is smaller at larger Ma. The slow rate of spreading and also the small wetted area at large temperature gradients adversely affect the heat transfer rate from the liquid to the cold plate where the local convective heat transfer coefficient and the average Nusselt number (Nu) are decreasing functions of the Marangoni stress.