- Salary
- $100k – $150k
- Location
- San Francisco, California, US
- Workplace
- Remote
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- IT
- Seniority
- Senior
- Experience
- 7+ years
- Source
- Y Combinator
Description
About the Role
Saphira is hiring a Founding Account Executive to own and scale our enterprise revenue motion from first principles. This is a senior, high-impact IC role for someone who has repeatedly closed complex, technical enterprise deals and is ready to help define how a category is sold — not just hit quota.
You will be one of the earliest GTM leaders at Saphira, partnering directly with the founders to shape positioning, enterprise sales strategy, and our initial repeatable motion. While this role carries quota, it also carries real influence: you’ll help determine how safety, compliance, and certification are positioned as board-level business risks — and how Saphira becomes the default system of record for managing them.
Our customers are safety-critical hardware companies — robotics, autonomy, industrial systems, automotive, and advanced manufacturing — selling into regulated environments where certification and compliance directly gate revenue. Your job is to translate regulatory pain into enterprise urgency and close six- and seven-figure ARR deals.
What You’ll Do
Own Enterprise Revenue
- Run the full enterprise sales cycle from first meeting to close.
- Close large ACV deals with complex buying committees across engineering, compliance, legal, and executive leadership.
- Consistently forecast, manage pipeline, and hit aggressive ARR targets.
Build the Early Sales Motion
- Help define Saphira’s ICP, qualification standards, deal structure, and pricing approach.
- Turn founder-led sales and early wins into a repeatable, scalable enterprise motion.
- Provide feedback to product and leadership on roadmap, packaging, and buyer objections.
Executive-Level Storytelling
- Partner closely with founders to sharpen messaging and positioning.
- Translate safety certification, compliance automation, and risk reduction into revenue impact, time-to-market acceleration, and board-level risk mitigation.
- Sell credibly to VPs, C-suite executives, and technical decision-makers alike.
Navigate Regulated, Technical Environments
- Sell into organizations where compliance, certification, and standards materially affect product launch and revenue timelines.
- Map Saphira’s value directly to customer outcomes related to certification readiness and audit success.
Operate with Discipline
- Own CRM hygiene, pipeline inspection, deal reviews, and reporting.
- Establish early best practices that future AEs will inherit.
Who You Are
- 7–10 years of experience closing enterprise software deals, ideally in technical, regulated, or infrastructure-heavy domains.
- Proven track record of closing large, complex, multi-stakeholder deals (mid-six to seven-figure ACVs).
- Comfortable selling into engineering-led organizations and navigating technical buying processes.
- Experience selling where risk, compliance, safety, or regulation materially influence purchasing decisions.
- Builder mindset: you’ve operated in ambiguous environments and helped define process rather than inherit it.
- You want meaningful upside and ownership — not just a quota number.
Bonus (not required):
- Experience selling into hardware, robotics, autonomy, industrial, automotive, or aerospace customers.
- Experience as an early AE at a high-growth startup.
Compensation & Benefits
- Base Salary: $100K – $150K
- On-Target Earnings (OTE): ~$100K – $150K
- Equity: Meaningful early-stage equity (commensurate with seniority and impact)
- Role Type: Full-time
- Location: San Francisco, CA or Remote (US-based preferred)
Why This Role Matters
This is not a “join late and run playbooks” role. As a Founding AE at Saphira, you will:
- Shape how a new enterprise category is sold
- Influence product direction through real customer signal
- Build leverage that compounds into future leadership opportunities
- Participate meaningfully in the upside of an early, high-conviction company