Sales Account Executive (B2B AI)

Zeko AI; Dadri; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Zeko AI in Noida and Bengaluru is seeking an Account Executive to own end-to-end enterprise SaaS deals, from discovery to closure, including pilot, security reviews, and procurement.

You will defend pricing, build a strong book of accounts, and drive expansion across geographies with a quarterly forecast within band. You report to the Sales Team Lead; the role offers founder-level exposure and rapid growth in a fast-evolving AI startup.

Qualifications

• 3–6 years in B2B / enterprise SaaS sales.

Responsibilities

• Own discovery and demo, diagnosing before pitching.
• Pilot scoping, success criteria and conversion—pilot to revenue.
• End-to-end commercial conversations: value case, pricing posture, negotiation, walk-away.
• Self-sourced pipeline; SDRs support your book; you own the book.

Job description

Zeko builds AI agents for hiring and talent evaluation. Our core product, Avya , runs structured L1 interviews end to end — a real conversation with an AI avatar that adapts its follow-up questions to what the candidate actually says, then produces a scored, evidence-backed report a recruiter can act on in under three minutes.

Around that sits a full stack: resume and recruiter screening, voice-based candidate engagement, post-offer follow-up, L2 panel scheduling, proctored assessments, job validation, and AskAvya — a layer that lets a hiring manager interrogate a candidate report in plain language.

About Zeko AI

Zeko builds AI agents for hiring and talent evaluation. Our core product, Avya , runs structured L1 interviews end to end — a real conversation with an AI avatar that adapts its follow-up questions to what the candidate actually says, then produces a scored, evidence-backed report a recruiter can act on in under three minutes.

Around that sits a full stack: resume and recruiter screening, voice-based candidate engagement, post-offer follow-up, L2 panel scheduling, proctored assessments, job validation, and AskAvya — a layer that lets a hiring manager interrogate a candidate report in plain language.

Where we are

• Growing 20% quarter on quarter. Unit economics that work per account, not growth bought with discounts.
• Enterprise customers with high renewal rates. Persistent, Nagarro, Orion Innovation, Sopra Steria, Schneider Electric, Cholamandalam, Shadowfax, Pierian Services.
• We survive enterprise scrutiny. InfoSec reviews at Banks and global IT services firms, EU AI Act clauses, DPDPA, SLA and uptime commitments we wrote ourselves. ISO 27001, SOC 2, ISO 42001 and ISO 27701 are in progress. For a seller this matters: it means the deals you work are real, and they close.
• Best AI Startup awarded 25 lacs by Hon’ble Minister of Electronics and IT at India AI Summit. Top 20 Startups among 10,000+ applications at UAE-India CEPA Council

Why this is a good seat

The category is being created right now, and we are early in it. Every enterprise TA function in India is being asked what it is doing about AI. Most do not have an answer. You will not spend your quarter explaining why the problem exists, you will spend it showing a buyer a better way to run something they already do badly.

We sell to serious buyers. TA Heads, CHROs, L&D Heads, CISOs, transformation leaders. Deals run ₹5L to ₹1Cr+ with pilots, security reviews and procurement. This is enterprise selling with a real cycle, not transactional SaaS.

You get founder-level context. The CEO runs sales directly. You will not be three layers away from the person who sets pricing, ships the product and talks to the board. Decisions that take a quarter elsewhere take a day here.

High AI exposure to improve performance. An AI coach runs over our own call recordings. Your demos and negotiations get reviewed against evidence, not impressions. If you want to get materially better at selling within twelve months, the instrumentation for that already exists.

The next eighteen months are the interesting ones. The plan is 6x growth in ARR. Whoever joins now builds the function rather than inherits it: the playbook, the verticals, the team. That is a different experience from joining at ₹100 Cr, and it is the honest reason to pick us.

Account Executive

Noida & Bengaluru · Full-time · 3–6 years in B2B / enterprise SaaS sales · Reports to the Sales Team Lead

The real version of this role

The phrase that matters is including the parts you do not control . A Zeko deal passes through a pilot, a security review, a legal redline, a procurement cycle and sometimes a CISO. None of those are your team. All of them are your deal. The difference between a good AE here and an average one is not demo skill — it is whether a deal ever sits still because someone else had not come back yet.

You will not be rescued from your own commercials either. You put the number on the table, you defend it, and you decide what you will trade and what you will not. Your Team Lead sits in on negotiations, but as second chair — present, mostly silent, there to stop a concession being given away live and to debrief with you afterwards. They do not take the call. Once you have closed two deals inside the approved band without an out-of-band concession, they stop joining.

You also own solutioning at the level that matters most: taking a messy description of a hiring problem and turning it into the right modules, a scoped pilot and a definition of what success means. Our Success team handles the genuinely complex builds — ATS integrations, multi-geography rollouts, a client's own competency framework, anything touching architecture or security. Everything short of that is yours, because it is the same muscle as qualifying properly.

What you own

• A named book of accounts in one industry segment, with a quarterly plan behind it
• Discovery and demo, diagnosing before pitching
• Pilot scoping, success criteria and conversion — you own whether the pilot turns into revenue, Success owns whether it runs well
• Commercial conversations end to end: value case, pricing posture, negotiation, walk-away
• Self-sourced pipeline. SDRs support your book; they do not fill it for you
• Expansion inside your accounts — a second business unit, another geography, another module
• An honest forecast, held within ±15%, reforecast down early rather than defended late
• A complete handoff to Success within 48 hours of closing, because the deal you sell is the deal someone has to deliver

What good looks like after twelve months

• You have hit quota for two consecutive quarters with a forecast that held
• A meaningful share of your closed business came from pipeline you created yourself
• You have expanded at least one existing account into a new module or business unit
• You have run a full enterprise cycle — pilot, InfoSec, procurement — without escalating it
• You have coached a junior teammate on something specific, and it stuck

You will do well here if

• You qualify hard and are comfortable killing a deal that will not fund
• You can name the compelling event, the budget holder and the decision process on every live deal
• You hold a price under pressure and trade rather than concede
• You chase the InfoSec response and the legal redline yourself instead of reporting them as blockers
• You bring Success, Solutions and Legal in early and give them room, rather than at proposal stage
• You call a miss the day you see it

What this role is not

• It is not order-taking on inbound. If you have only ever closed what marketing generated, this will be uncomfortable.
• It is not a role where someone senior handles the commercials for you above a certain deal size. We deliberately do not work that way, because it stops people learning.
• It is not a hand-off-and-forget role. You stay connected to the account after it closes, because expansion is where most of our growth comes from.

What we offer

Base plus variable on a framework built so that a performing AE earns well — our comp design targets a multiple of CTC in quota, not a token bonus. A book with real enterprise logos in it from day one. A Success and Deal Desk function that genuinely absorbs security questionnaires, DPAs and SLAs rather than routing them back to you. Direct access to the CEO on pricing and positioning. Weekly coaching on your own recordings.

How we hire

We do not run interviews on impressions. Every role is assessed against the same written competencies with the same rating scale, and every rating has to point at something you actually did or something we watched you do in the process.

Expect live exercises rather than only conversation: a cold-call roleplay for the SDR seat, a negotiation roleplay for the AE seat, a coaching exercise on a real call recording for the Team Lead seat. You will be told what each exercise is testing before it starts. We would rather see you work than hear you describe working.

Your interview ratings are shared with you and become the baseline for your first quarterly review, so the process is also the start of your development plan.

Stages

• AI Interview with functional depth, with our AI- Avya. Role fitment, knowledge andexperience check. Get a revert instantly when you apply, if you are shortlisted.
• Competency interview with live exercises, with Sales Lead or CEO within 24-48 hours of AI Interview
• Conversation with the Founders within 4-5 working days after Stage 2
• Reference checks, then offer within 4-5 working days after Stage 3

What we will not pretend about

• We are still building. The playbook exists but it is not finished, and parts of it you will write. If you need a mature system to operate inside, we are not it yet.
• Enterprise cycles are long. Six to twelve months with pilots and security reviews. Your first quarter will not look like your fourth.
• Everyone is close to the work. The CEO reads deal notes. That is useful when you want a decision and uncomfortable if you would rather not be observed.
• We check what we claim. Attainment, meeting numbers and team development claims are verified at reference stage before an offer, not after.