Founding Account Executive

Clera

• $150K — $180K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6-10 years in enterprise SaaS sales with full-cycle ownership
  • Proven success in closing deals in emerging markets
  • Experience with infrastructure, AI/ML, or cloud technologies
  • Ability to engage technical buyers and build credibility
  • Navigated complex multi-stakeholder buying processes
  • Familiarity with early-stage, founder-led environments
  • Consultative mindset with experience structuring ambiguous problems

Responsibilities

  • Generate sales pipeline through outbound and networking
  • Engage technical teams to assess architecture needs
  • Build alignment among technical champions and executives
  • Collaborate with Solutions Architect for technical validation
  • Translate proofs into business-focused narratives
  • Structure proof-of-value engagements with clear criteria
  • Work closely with the CEO to secure alignment and close deals
  • Provide field insights to refine ICP and go-to-market strategies

Benefits

  • Remote work flexibility
  • Opportunity to shape a new category of technology
  • Build foundational sales strategies from the ground up
  • Collaboration with executive leadership
  • Access to a high-impact role in a startup environment
Full Job Description
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.

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