Startup Account Executive

United States Digital Space LLC; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 350,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC in Bengaluru seeks a Startup Account Executive to bring frontier AI to India's startup ecosystem, partnering with fintech unicorns to emerging SaaS firms and engineers to leverage Claude acrossuse cases—from outreach to production deployment.

You will navigate technical decision-makers, collaborate with global GTM, product, and marketing teams, and shape solutions for Indian startups while upholding AI safety and reliability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of B2B sales experience in the Indian startup ecosystem.
• Proven consultative seller to technical audiences.
• Strong understanding of India's startup landscape and market dynamics.
• Technical fluency to discuss API integration, LLM fundamentals, security, and cost optimisation.

Responsibilities

• Build relationships with startups across India, from seed to growth stages.
• Lead full sales cycle from outreach to production deployment of Claude.
• Navigate technical decision-makers including CTOs, engineering leads, and product heads.
• Collaborate with GTM, product, and marketing teams to tailor India-focused strategies.
• Capture use cases across fintech, edtech, healthtech, and agritech to inform roadmap.
• Develop India-specific sales playbooks and pricing conversations.

Skills

B2B sales

Startup sales

Technical fluency

Consultative selling

Indian market knowledge

Account management

Pricing models

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

About the company

the company’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

We are seeking a Startup Account Executive to bring safe, frontier AI to India's thriving startup ecosystem from our Bengaluru hub. You will partner with some of India's most innovative startups—from fintech unicorns to emerging SaaS pioneers—helping founders, CTOs, and engineering leaders leverage Claude to transform their businesses. Combining consultative selling with deep technical fluency, you'll own the full sales journey from first outreach through production deployment, while developing market insight into the unique requirements of building in India for both domestic and global markets. Working closely with our global GTM, product, and marketing teams, you'll shape how the company serves the rapidly evolving needs of Indian startups while upholding our commitment to AI safety and reliability.

Key responsibilities

• Build relationships with key stakeholders across India's startup ecosystem, from seed-stage founders to scale-up leadership teams
• Own the complete sales cycle from initial outreach through implementation, navigating technical decision-makers including CTOs, engineering leads, and product heads, and ensuring successful adoption of Claude across diverse use cases
• Guide startups from proof-of-concept through paid pilot to production scaling, helping them navigate consumption-based pricing and cost optimisation
• Collaborate with ecosystem partners including accelerators, VCs, and developer communities to expand the company's presence in India
• Develop market insights specific to Indian startups—including cost optimisation, scale, multilingual and vernacular language needs, and data residency—and advocate for features that serve Indian developers
• Gather and document use cases from sectors such as fintech, edtech, healthtech, and agritech to inform the global product roadmap
• Develop playbooks tailored to the Indian startup sales cycle, accounting for budget cycles, procurement processes, and the balance of technical and business stakeholders
• Contribute to building a world-class sales organisation in India by mentoring and collaborating with team members and establishing processes that scale

Minimum qualifications

• 8+ years of B2B sales experience in the Indian startup ecosystem, preferably selling developer tools, APIs, or SaaS products
• Track record of success in consultative selling to technical audiences, with demonstrated ability to exceed targets
• Deep understanding of India's startup landscape, including key players, investors, and market dynamics
• Technical fluency to engage credibly with engineering teams on topics such as API integration, LLM fundamentals (context windows, prompt engineering, fine-tuning), common use cases (RAG, semantic search, conversational AI), security and compliance (data privacy, SOC2/ISO), and cost optimisation (caching, batch processing); you don't need to code, but you should confidently translate between business value and technical requirements
• Experience with consumption-based pricing models and guiding startups from POC to production
• Understanding of Indian startup buying dynamics, including budget cycles, procurement processes, and common data residency and compliance concerns
• Strong relationship-building and communication skills, with the ability to navigate from technical teams to C-suite executives
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to thrive in ambiguity, build processes from scratch, and collaborate across time zones with global teams
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience

Preferred qualifications

• Existing relationships within India's startup ecosystem, including founders, VCs, and accelerator networks
• Experience selling to Indian unicorns or high-growth startups in sectors like fintech, e-commerce, or SaaS
• Technical background in engineering or computer science
• Understanding of AI/ML applications in Indian contexts, from voice interfaces to computer vision
• Track record of building new markets or launching products in India
• Active involvement in developer communities, startup events, or tech meetups
• Proficiency in one or more Indian languages in addition to English
• Commitment to responsible AI development and deployment, especially in diverse, complex markets like India

LogisticsMinimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At the company we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an e