Founding Account Executive

Artificial Societies; Greater London; On-site; GBP 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Artificial Societies is hiring founding Account Executives to establish and scale our sales motion. You will own the end-to-end process from prospecting to signing, building a repeatable approach for future AEs and shaping pricing, packaging, and product feedback.

You’ll report to the co-founder and CPO and work from London or New York with uncapped commissions and equity. The role demands a proven track record of closing six-figure deals and navigating ambiguity in a startup environment.

Qualifications

• 3+ years closing new business.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and undefined sales processes.
• Self-sourcing pipeline from outbound, network, events.
• Able to engage senior buyers (heads of insight, strategy directors, partners).
• Curious about technology and what it can do.
• Ownership mentality: drive deals to closure without prompts.

Responsibilities

• Source and close new logos, owning full sales cycle from prospecting to signature.
• Build the sales process: qualification criteria, pipeline stages, handover to delivery.
• Write playbooks: discovery questions, objections, pilots, proposals.
• Shape pricing and packaging with founders for pilots and platform access.
• Provide product feedback from buyer learnings to product/research teams.
• Own the forecast with a healthy pipeline for hiring decisions.
• Help build the team by defining profiles and onboarding new AEs.

Skills

Closing deals

Ambiguity tolerance

Self-sourcing

Executive stakeholder engagement

Tech curiosity

Ownership mentality

Job description

About the role

We’re hiring a small group of founding Account Executives. We’ve already built incredible partnerships with our clients, but so far every sale has been led by the founders. Now we want to turn that success into a process: how we find the next buyer and how a deal moves from first conversation to signed contract. You’ll report directly to Patrick Sharpe, our co-founder and CPO.

You’ll carry a target and close new logos yourself, but this is not a full quota. Every element of the system you build is one future AEs will inherit: from sourcing leads, to qualification, closing, and handover.

If you want to decide how a new category gets sold, this is the role for you.

What you’ll do

• Source and close new logos. Own the full cycle: prospecting, discovery, negotiation and signature.
• Build the sales process. Turn what the founders have learned about our buyers into qualification criteria, pipeline stages and a clean handover from sale to delivery. Sharpen our ideal customer profile as we learn more.
• Write the playbook others follow. Document what works, from discovery questions and objection handling to pilot structure and proposal templates.
• Shape pricing and packaging. Work with the founders on how we price pilots, engagements and platform access, and how deals are structured.
• Shape the product through learnings. Understand what buyers need and feed this back to our product and research teams.
• Own the forecast. Keep a pipeline and forecast accurate enough that the founders can make hiring and investment decisions on it.
• Help build the team. As we hire more Account Executives, help define the profile, interview candidates and onboard them onto the process you built.

What we’re looking for

• 3+ years closing new business. Experience closing six-figure deals.
• Comfortable with ambiguity. We know our buyers, but there is no playbook, no enablement team and no formal sales process yet. You find that energising, not daunting.
• Self-sourcing. You can generate your own pipeline through outbound, your network and events.
• Credible with senior buyers. You can hold your own with a head of insight, a strategy director or a partner at an advisory firm, and you’re adept at navigating complex, multi-stakeholder cycles.
• Curious about the technology. You’ll be selling something new, so you’ll learn simulation well enough to explain what it can and cannot do.
• Ownership mentality. You don’t wait to be told. You see what needs to happen to win the deal, and you make it happen.

Nice to have

• You were one of the first commercial hires at an early-stage startup.
• You’ve sold AI, data, research or analytics products, where buyers weigh trust and accuracy before they buy.
• You’ve sold to insight, strategy, communications or consulting buyers.
• You’ve turned paid pilots into multi-year contracts.

Logistics

• Location: London or New York, in-office five days a week. We build better together, and this role is no exception.
• Compensation in London: £160,000–£200,000 OTE, split evenly between a £80,000–£100,000 base salary and commission at target.
• Compensation in New York: $260,000–$320,000 OTE, split evenly between a $130,000–$160,000 base salary and commission at target.
• Commission is uncapped.
• Plus equity.

Why join now

Simulation is a new market, and you’ll be one of the first people to sell it. You’ll sell to organisations whose decisions shape markets and policy, alongside engineers who can build what a client needs before the end of the call.

The demand is already there, and you’ll build the team that meets it. As that team grows, we intend to promote its leader from our founding Account Executives.