Founding Account Executive - Simulation Agent

Clera

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

Qualifications

  • 6+ years in B2B sales focused on engineering or manufacturing sectors with proven quota achievement.
  • Experience conducting software demos and technical evaluations without dedicated sales engineering support.
  • Familiarity with CAE/Simulation tools like ANSYS, SIMULIA, Altair, or Siemens Simcenter in a sales context.
  • Background in selling CAD/CAE/PLM or related technologies to large enterprises, with domain knowledge prioritizing over formal engineering degrees.
  • Understanding of AI agents and LLMs with the ability to link technology to engineering applications.
  • Ability to thrive in startup environments and build processes from the ground up.
  • Experience as an early sales hire is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

  • Own the complete sales cycle for acquiring new enterprise accounts.
  • Perform standalone product demonstrations and technical evaluations tailored to customer workflows.
  • Navigate complex buying committees, connecting various stakeholders from engineering to executive levels.
  • Develop account plans targeting users of competitor tools in the engineering space.
  • Create qualification criteria and frameworks that contribute to the company's comprehensive sales playbook.
  • Provide feedback to product teams to enhance AI agent capabilities based on sales learnings.
  • Establish and document repeatable sales processes for future team members.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to be a founding sales employee in a cutting-edge AI company.
  • Direct influence on shaping the sales strategy and processes from the ground up.
  • Work closely with top-tier engineering tools and technologies.
  • Potential for significant professional growth in a high-impact role.
  • Collaborative and innovative working environment.
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a founding sales hire at an early-stage AI software company building intelligent agents for hardware engineering workflows - spanning simulation, CAD, and PLM. You'll own the full new-logo sales motion from day one, converting both warm founder-sourced opportunities and self-generated pipeline into closed deals, while creating the playbook that future sellers will run.
What You'll Do
  • Own the complete sales cycle - outbound prospecting, discovery, technical evaluation, procurement navigation, and close - for net-new enterprise accounts.
  • Run unaided product demos and design technical evaluations inside customer models and workflows, translating results into business value without SE support.
  • Navigate complex, multi-stakeholder buying committees, bridging CAE/simulation champions to VP/Director-level economic buyers.
  • Build and execute target account plans against teams currently using tools such as ANSYS, SIMULIA, Altair, or Simcenter.
  • Develop qualification criteria, discovery frameworks, evaluation templates, and objection-handling guides that form the company's go-to-market playbook.
  • Feed structured learnings back to product to sharpen the agent and future sales motions.
  • Build repeatable processes and documentation for the sales organization you'll help grow.
What We're Looking For
  • 6+ years of full-cycle, outbound-led B2B sales into engineering or manufacturing organizations, with a verifiable record of sourcing and closing net-new logos against quota.
  • Proven ability to run unaided software demos and real technical evaluations with engineering teams - no reliance on a dedicated SE in the room.
  • Direct experience selling into CAE/Simulation environments (ANSYS, SIMULIA, Altair, Siemens Simcenter, or equivalents) as a vendor rep, reseller, or competitor.
  • Background selling CAD/CAE/PLM/EDA or adjacent deep-tech (dev tools, MLOps, infrastructure) into large enterprises; strong domain fluency is valued over formal engineering credentials.
  • Fluency with AI agents and LLMs, with the ability to articulate practical agentic workflows and translate capabilities into concrete engineering value.
  • Founding-hire mindset: comfortable building a motion from scratch, owning ambiguous work, and operating without an established playbook.
  • Prior experience as an early or founding sales hire is a strong plus.
Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA. Visa sponsorship is not available.

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