Founding Account Executive

ABOUT THE ROLE

This is the founding Account Executive role at a seed-stage AI/ML infrastructure startup, where you will build the commercial engine from the ground up alongside the CEO. You will own complex, consultative enterprise sales cycles end-to-end in a category-creation market, landing the lighthouse customers that establish the company's position and defining how a new category of tech architecture tooling gets sold.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Generate pipeline from scratch through scrappy outbound, network-driven opportunities, and high-conviction account engagement.

- Engage architects, staff-level engineers, and platform teams early to understand their architecture challenges, modernization goals, and organizational constraints.

- Multi-thread across technical champions, engineering leadership, and executive sponsors to build buying alignment.

- Partner with a Solutions Architect to translate technical validation and proof-of-value work into decision-grade artifacts.

- Convert technical proof into clear business narratives, including ROI analyses, BVAs, velocity, and risk reduction, to move deals forward.

- Structure and drive proof-of-value engagements with defined success criteria and mutual action plans.

- Partner closely with the CEO to secure executive alignment and drive deals to close.

- Shape ICP, positioning, and the go-to-market system through field insights, and feed high-fidelity market intelligence back into product and activation.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

- 6 to 10 years of enterprise SaaS sales experience with full-cycle ownership, from pipeline generation through close.

- Demonstrated success closing net-new business in emerging or category-creation markets.

- Experience selling infrastructure, cloud, AI/ML, DevTools, data platforms, or other architecture-level technology offerings.

- Proven ability to engage skeptical, highly technical buyers, including architects, principal and staff engineers, and engineering leadership, with genuine technical credibility.

- Track record navigating multi-stakeholder enterprise buying processes with both technical champions and executive sponsors such as CTOs and VPs of Engineering.

- Experience operating in early-stage or founder-led environments where GTM systems and sales playbooks were still being defined.

- Consultative and diagnostic mindset: you frame situations before pitching and bring structure to ambiguous problems.

- Experience converting product-led usage and intent signals into structured enterprise sales processes.

- High comfort with ambiguity and a builder mentality suited to 0-to-1 environments.

- Familiarity with modern cloud-native ecosystems, including hyperscalers, developer infrastructure, or AI platforms, is a plus.

LOCATION

Fully remote. Primary location: New York, NY, United States. Visa sponsorship is not available; candidates must be eligible to work in the United States.