Founding GTM Lead - UAE

UniversalAGI, Inc.; United Arab Emirates; On-site; AED 400,000 - 750,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive compensation

Frequent regional travel

Direct collaboration with CEO

Job summary

UniversalAGI, Inc. seeks aFounding GTM Territory Lead for the UAE to establish the company’s commercial presence in a critical energy and defense corridor.

You will work directly with the CEO to map the market, build playbooks, and close deals across Oil & Gas and Aerospace & Defense, including navigating government procurement and localization requirements. This role requires a seasoned enterprise sales professional willing to operate as a founding, largely solo function with frequent regional

Qualifications

• 10+ years of enterprise sales experience into Oil & Gas and/or Aerospace & Defense.
• Existing relationships with territory oil companies and defense primes.
• Experience selling into UAE.
• Engineering background or hands-on technical experience (CFD, mechanical/aerospace engineering, or reservoir/production engineering).
• Active, callable relationships with VP-level contacts at national oil companies, operators, defense primes, or state-linked defense entities in the region.
• Proven track record of personally sourcing and closing large, net-new deals.
• Startup GTM experience; founding/single-function market development.
• Based in UAE or willing to relocate with frequent travel.

Responsibilities

• Own and build UAE go-to-market motion across the UAE spanning Oil & Gas and Aerospace & Defense.
• Run the full sales lifecycle for major accounts in the region: prospecting, technical proof points, commercial negotiation, close, and account expansion.
• Defend and expand our position with anchor accounts while closing new-logo opportunities across both verticals.
• Map the region's buying landscape including government procurement, national-champion mandates, and localization requirements.
• Translate our physics AI value proposition into a defensible business case for technical and economic buyers.
• Partner with the CEO and founding GTM leads to shape product and GTM strategy for regional needs.
• Build the region's sales playbook from scratch: qualification criteria, deal stages, messaging, and repeatable processes.
• Represent UniversalAGI at industry events, conferences, and customer sites across the region.

Skills

Domain sales experience

Oil & Gas / Aerospace & Defense

Relationship based selling

Regional UAE experience

Technical fluency

Executive networking

Startup mindset

Travel willingness

Job description

UAE-Based

Location: UAE-based (Dubai or Abu Dhabi preferred), with frequent regional travel

Compensation: Competitive Salary + Commission + Equity

Founding GTM Territory Lead, UAE

Who We Are

Engineering simulation is one of the last major categories of software that AI hasn't rebuilt. The tools used to design aircraft, ships, reservoirs, and medical devices still run on numerical methods that are decades old, and an engineer can wait a full day for a single answer. UniversalAGI is building foundation models that learn physics directly from data, and they are already running in early deployments on real computational fluid dynamics and reservoir engineering problems for some of the largest industrial and defense organizations in the world.

We are a team of 25 researchers and engineers in San Francisco backed by Elad Gil (#1 Solo VC), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Prith Banerjee (ANSYS CTO), Ion Stoica (Databricks Founder), Jared Kushner (former Senior Advisor to the President), David Patterson (Turing Award Winner), and Luis Videgaray (former Foreign and Finance Minister of Mexico).

About the Role

As our Founding GTM Territory Lead for UAE, you'll be in the arena from day one, building UniversalAGI's commercial presence across one of the most consequential energy and defense regions in the world. This is your chance to take everything you've learned selling into national oil companies, defense primes, and state-linked enterprises, and use it to open an entirely new territory for a company already winning deals with some of the most demanding customers on Earth.

You’ll work directly with the CEO and founding GTM team to build our go-to-market motion for this territory from scratch, across both Oil & Gas and Aerospace & Defense: mapping the market, building the playbook, and closing deals yourself long before there’s a team to hand them to.

What You’ll Do

• Own and build UniversalAGI's go-to-market motion across the UAE spanning both Oil & Gas and Aerospace & Defense.

• Run the full sales lifecycle for major accounts in the region: prospecting, technical proof points, commercial negotiation, close, and account expansion.

• Defend and expand our position with the anchor accounts already in motion in the region, while identifying and closing new-logo opportunities across both verticals.

• Map the region's buying landscape: government-influenced procurement, national-champion mandates, and localization and offset requirements (e.g., the UAE's In-Country Value program, Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 localization requirements administered via GAMI).

• Translate our physics AI value proposition, reduced simulation cycle time, lower compute costs, faster R&D, and reduced program and mission risk, into a defensible, quantified business case for both technical and economic buyers.

• Partner directly with the CEO, our other founding GTM leads, and our engineering team to shape product and GTM strategy around real regional buyer needs.

• Build this region's sales playbook from scratch: qualification criteria, deal stages, messaging, and repeatable processes that future hires in the region can run without you.

• Represent UniversalAGI at industry events, conferences, and customer sites across the region.

Qualifications

• Domain sales experience: 10+ years of enterprise sales experience selling into Oil & Gas and/or Aerospace & Defense organizations.

• Relationship based selling: Existing relationships with territory oil companies and defense primes, with ability to navigate government-influenced procurement, security and localization requirements, and multi-stakeholder buying committees.

• Regional experience: Proven experience selling into customers in the UAE.

• Technical fluency: Engineering background or hands-on technical experience (CFD, mechanical/aerospace engineering, or reservoir/production engineering) sufficient to go deep on the technical value proposition with engineering buyers.

• Network: Active, callable relationships with VP-level and above contacts at national oil companies, operators, defense primes, or state-linked defense entities in the region.

• Track record: History of personally sourcing and closing large, net-new deals, not inherited pipeline.

• Startup mindset: Comfortable operating as a founding, largely solo function: building a market map, GTM strategy, and sales playbook from scratch under real ambiguity.

• Location: Based in the UAE (or willing to relocate) with frequent travel across the region

Bonus Qualifications

• Arabic language fluency.

• Existing relationships with territory oil companies and defense primes.

• Experience selling simulation, CFD, or other applied engineering software specifically.

• Prior experience at an early-stage startup building a GTM function from scratch.

• Experience navigating both Oil & Gas and Aerospace & Defense buying processes.

• Advanced technical degree (MS or PhD in a related engineering or science field).

Cultural Fit

• Technical Respect: Ability to earn respect through hands-on technical contribution

• Intensity: Thrives in our unusually intense culture - willing to grind when needed

• Customer Obsession: Passionate about solving real customer problems, not just cool tech

• Deep Work: Values long, uninterrupted periods of focused work over meetings

• High Availability: Ready to be deeply involved whenever critical issues arise

• Communication: Can translate complex technical concepts to customers and team

• Growth Mindset: Embraces the compounding returns of intelligence and continuous learning

• Startup Mindset: Comfortable with ambiguity, rapid change, and wearing multiple hats

• Work Ethic: Willing to put in the extra hours when needed to hit critical milestones

• Team Player: Collaborative approach with low ego and high accountability

What We Offer

• Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a rapidly growing foundational AI company.

• Work on cutting-edge industrial AI problems with immediate real-world impact.

• Direct collaboration with the founder & CEO and ability to influence company strategy

• Competitive compensation with significant equity upside.

• In-person culture with the founding team, paired with the autonomy to run your own territory from the field, extensive travel across the regions, and some in person collaboration with the San Francisco team.

• Access to world-class investors and advisors in the AI space.

How We’re Different

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.