- Salary
- $125k – $250k/yr
- Location
- San Francisco, California, US
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- Sales
- Source
- Y Combinator
Description
Polymath Robotics builds autonomy software for industrial vehicles. We make it possible to automate vehicles like tractors, bulldozers, haul trucks, and other heavy equipment without building an autonomy stack from scratch.
We're hiring an Account Executive to help us find and close our next generation of large enterprise customers.
This isn't a traditional SaaS AE role. Our customers are automating real machines in industries like mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and defense. Deals are complex, technical, and increasingly large. A single customer can represent hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in annual revenue.
You'll work directly with Polymath's CEO, Product Architect, and commercial team to take opportunities from first conversation through signed contract.
What you'll do
You'll be responsible for building and driving a pipeline of large enterprise opportunities, with a target of approximately $2M in new ARR per year, typically across 4–8 deals.
You'll:
- Find and develop new opportunities through outbound prospecting, referrals, industry relationships, events, and creative approaches we haven't thought of yet.
- Run initial conversations and understand the customer's business, operation, buying process, and reasons for considering autonomy.
- Work with a Product Architect to determine what type of autonomous system would actually be useful to the customer.
- Build relationships across customer organizations—from engineers and operators to executives, procurement, and legal.
- Keep complicated deals moving. Establish next steps, identify blockers, follow up relentlessly, and make sure promising opportunities don't die from inertia.
- Coordinate the internal team needed to win each deal, including the CEO, Product Architect, and Commercial Associate.
- Navigate pilots, technical evaluations, budgeting, procurement, contracting, and executive approval.
- Own the commercial relationship and forecasting through close.
- Look for expansion opportunities within customers you've helped land.
You'll have significant support. The Product Architect own much of the technical scoping, and our Commercial Associate helps produce customized proposals, presentations, research, and other sales material.
You own making the deal happen.
Who we're looking for
We're deliberately open to someone relatively early in their sales career.
You don't need 10 years of enterprise sales experience or a Rolodex of Fortune 500 executives. We're much more interested in someone with an exceptional trajectory who wants substantially more responsibility than they're likely to get at a larger company.
You should have:
- A track record of succeeding in B2B sales and owning deals through close.
- Experience generating your own pipeline—not just working inbound leads.
- Evidence that you're unusually ambitious, persistent, and proactive.
- Excellent written and verbal communication.
- Strong organization and an instinct for keeping deals moving.
- Comfort talking with both highly technical people and senior executives.
- The ability to learn complicated products and industries quickly.
- A willingness to pick up the phone, get on a plane, visit an industrial site, or do whatever else reasonably helps move an important opportunity forward.
- The judgment to be persistent without damaging a long-term customer relationship.
Experience selling six-figure enterprise deals, technical products, industrial technology, robotics, manufacturing software, or similar products is helpful, but not required.
We're especially interested in people who have repeatedly been given more responsibility because they performed exceptionally well—for example, someone who progressed rapidly from SDR/BDR to AE and is now ready to make the jump into large enterprise sales.
How sales works at Polymath
Enterprise sales at Polymath is a team sport.
An AE isn't expected to independently design an autonomous vehicle system, write every proposal, negotiate every contract, and then manage the customer forever.
Instead, you'll quarterback a team:
- You: Find opportunities and drive the sales process from first meeting through close.
- Product Architect: Work with the customer to understand their operation and scope the right technical solution.
- Commercial Associate: Help with account research, customized materials, proposals, and moving the commercial process forward.
- CEO: Work directly with you on major opportunities, commercial strategy, negotiation, and closing.
As customers grow, Account Managers can take responsibility for the ongoing relationship and expansions they originate, allowing you to continue hunting for new opportunities.
Compensation
Base salary: $125,000–$140,000 + commission + equity
Our commission structure is designed to reward people for building meaningful, durable business.
AEs earn 5% of the ARR they close, 2% of non-recurring revenue as the customer pays it. Because many of our contracts are multi-year, a deal you close today can continue generating commission for you in future years.
At the target of $2M in new ARR, that represents approximately $100,000 of annual commission from that cohort of business by end of their first year as collected. Strong performance can therefore compound into substantial earnings as you build a book of multi-year customers.
There is no artificial cap on what you can earn.
Why Polymath
This role offers an unusual amount of responsibility for someone relatively early in their career.
You'll learn how large industrial companies actually buy emerging technology. You'll participate directly in six- and seven-figure enterprise sales. You'll work with founders and technical leaders rather than being one layer in a large sales organization. And you'll help determine how Polymath builds its sales organization as we grow.
If you're already one of the best people on a small or mid-market sales team and are frustrated that it'll take another five years before someone lets you own the biggest opportunities, we'd like to talk to you.