Account Executive, Frontier AI

Clera

• $360K — $400K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3+ years of experience selling technical products to technical buyers with complex deal ownership.
  • Direct sales experience in AI labs, robotics companies, data infrastructure firms, or research organizations.
  • Fluency in modern model training and evaluation, including post-training evaluation design.
  • Proven ability to build and own account plans identifying buyers and mapping organization structures.
  • Experience structuring and negotiating enterprise deals, including licensing and data agreements.
  • Ability to create and implement sales processes and playbooks from scratch in new markets.
  • Comfortable operating in a minimal structure with evolving product definitions.

Responsibilities

  • Identify and engage researchers and data leads in target organizations.
  • Build and own account plans for designated labs, mapping buyer and evaluation metrics.
  • Conduct technical discovery conversations with research leaders, translating insights into product specifications.
  • Negotiate enterprise engagements, focusing on pricing strategy and deal structure.
  • Provide competitive intelligence to inform product roadmap decisions.
  • Collaborate with expert networks to maintain credibility with technical buyers.
  • Develop a sales playbook from scratch, establishing the sales motion for the company.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to shape the sales process from the ground up at a seed-stage startup.
  • Direct impact on product development and strategy through customer feedback.
  • Work at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and applied research in AI/ML.
  • Collaborative environment with highly technical buyers and expert networks.
  • Flexible work options with potential for remote arrangements.
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a founding sales role at a seed-stage AI/ML company, owning commercial relationships with frontier research labs and applied AI teams across healthcare, robotics, and language model development. You will build the sales motion from scratch, sitting at the intersection of product, customer discovery, and strategy, and your feedback will directly shape what gets built.
What You'll Do
  • Identify and engage researchers and data leads inside target organizations who have reasoning gaps the product can close.
  • Build and own account plans for a defined set of labs, mapping buyers, evaluation bottlenecks, and post-training challenges.
  • Run technical discovery conversations with research and data leadership, translating findings into product requirements.
  • Structure and negotiate enterprise engagements, licensing arrangements, and data agreements, owning pricing strategy and deal shape.
  • Bring competitive and demand intelligence back into the company to inform roadmap decisions.
  • Collaborate with expert networks to maintain technical credibility with highly technical buyers.
  • Create the sales playbook itself, with no existing motion to follow.
What We're Looking For
  • 3 or more years selling technical products to technical buyers, with demonstrated ownership of complex deals from start to close (not supporting roles).
  • Direct experience selling to or working inside AI labs, robotics companies, data infrastructure firms, or research organizations.
  • Fluency in how modern models are trained and evaluated, including post-training, evaluation design, and reward signal design.
  • Experience building and owning account plans, including identifying buyers, mapping organizational structures, and defining engagement strategies.
  • Proven ability to structure and negotiate enterprise deals, including licensing and data agreements.
  • Experience building sales processes and playbooks from scratch in new markets or for new product categories.
  • Comfort operating with minimal structure where product definition is still evolving and your input shapes direction.
  • Existing relationships with research or data teams at frontier AI labs is a strong plus.
  • Background in healthcare, life sciences, regulated environments, robotics, autonomy, or embodied AI is a plus.
  • Prior experience as an early commercial hire at a seed or Series A company is a plus.
Compensation & Benefits

Base salary range: $360,000 to $400,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location

Primary location is San Francisco, California. Remote work within the United States is also considered.

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