Account Executive

Zelara; Berlin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Founding role

Travel across Europe

Job summary

Zelara is seeking a hands-on senior Account Executive to close six-figure B2B deals across Europe, starting with mid-market and enterprise CRM, lifecycle, and marketing buyers. You will partner with our founder and a Solutions Architect to articulate why customers should buy now rather than build, shaping our sales motion as traction grows.

You will own end-to-end deals, open new doors, and drive expansion and renewal, with Berlin as a hub and regular travel across Europe.

Qualifications

• Senior AE with several years closing complex B2B deals (SaaS preferred).
• Closed mid-market and enterprise deals of six figures with a buying committee.
• Domain experience selling to CRM, lifecycle or marketing teams at B2C companies or martech vendors.
• Startup-like experience building a sales motion from scratch without a playbook.

Responsibilities

• Own full deal cycle from discovery to close, including workshops and proposals.
• Close first deals with founder, then independently; negotiate pricing and terms.
• Show value of buying versus building; partner with Solutions Architect on technical plan.
• Shape sales motion as the company scales; test channels and messaging.

Skills

Senior AE

SaaS sales

CRM/Lifecycle experience

Start-up sales

Buying committee navigation

English fluency with German a plus

Job description

Most CRM marketing still sends the same message to everyone and calls it personalization. Zelara fixes that with agentic lifecycle marketing that improves with every interaction. It runs on the CRM stack a company already has and gets every customer the right message at the right time.

With bunq, Europe's second-largest neobank, we delivered +7.4% activation and +66% reactivation uplift, measured against a control group. We raised a €3M pre-seed and are generating revenue with paying enterprise customers.

The Role

You work for Björn, our Co-CEO & Founder. At Uber he was responsible for hundreds of billion customer touchpoints a year. He has seen our buyers' problem from the inside.

You are a hands-on senior AE. You close your own deals and help build our sales motion, turning early traction into something repeatable. Most buyers have no budget line for this yet, so you shape how they think about the problem rather than answer a request that already exists.

You sell to CRM, lifecycle and marketing leaders at mid-market and enterprise B2C companies across Europe. Contracts are six figures a year, cycles two to four months. You run each account with our Solutions Architect: you own the deal, they own the technical plan.

What You Will Do

• Own every deal from first conversation to signed contract: discovery, workshops, proposal and close
• Close your first deals side by side with a founder, and soon on your own
• Make the case for buying over building, with our Solutions Architect at your side
• Learn what wins, and shape it into the way we sell as we grow
• Open new doors yourself, testing which channels and messages land
• Take what customers tell you back to product and engineering, so it changes what we build
• Negotiate pricing and terms, and grow your accounts through expansion and renewal

Within 90 days you close your first customer on your own and can tell us which deals are worth chasing.

Who You Are

• A senior AE with several years of closing complex B2B deals yourself, ideally SaaS, against your own sales target
• You have closed mid-market and enterprise deals of our size (six figures a year) through a buying committee, and can say what made each buyer say yes.
• Domain experience: you have sold to CRM, lifecycle or marketing teams at B2C companies, or sold martech (Braze, Klaviyo, Iterable, Customer.io and similar).
• Start-up experience: you have built a sales motion from scratch as a founder, an early sales hire or the owner of a blank page, without a playbook or inbound pipeline
• You judge a customer's business first: the metric their leadership is held to, and what we are worth to them in numbers
• You are credible with a CMO, a Head of CRM and their data engineer, and hold your own when the engineers say they could build it, without dismissing what they built
• You think in funnel metrics and say the uncomfortable thing early
• Ideally, you have led a small sales team while still closing deals yourself
• AI-native, fluent in English. German is a strong advantage.

Bonus

• You have run a CRM or lifecycle programme in-house
• You have turned pilots into multi-year contracts

What We Offer

• Work directly with founders who have built and sold an AI SaaS business and run large-scale B2C from the customer's side
• A founding role, hands-on from day one, with room to lead
• A technical counterpart in every account
• A competitive salary and a meaningful equity stake
• Berlin, with regular travel across Europe

Our Compass: Seek truth. Act with integrity. Put customers first. Accelerate impact.