Account Executive

usekernel; San Francisco, New York (CA, NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Industry-competitive salary

Above market equity

Medical + dental + vision coverage

Daily lunches

Unlimited PTO

401k + company match

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Kernel is seeking a technical-leaning Account Executive to own the full sales cycle from discovery to close. You will prospect, qualify, negotiate, and build relationships with developers and technical leaders who rely on Kernel for production systems.

You'll collaborate with Solutions Engineering, Customer Engineering, and Product to scope requirements, keep deals moving, and define a repeatable sales motion that scales with an early-stage startup.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of closing experience in a sales role, ideally selling technical or developer-facing products.
• Comfortable selling to technical buyers: architecture, APIs, and product usage discussions.
• Experience running a full-cycle sales process from lead to close.
• High tolerance for ambiguity; customers are building novel solutions.
• Daily use of AI in your workflow; excited by AI-native space.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; know when to loop in teammates.

Responsibilities

• Own your pipeline end-to-end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, negotiation, and close.
• Build and manage relationships with developers, engineering leaders, and technical decision-makers.
• Partner with solutions engineering / customer engineering to scope technical requirements and keep deals moving.
• Provide accurate, up-to-date reads on pipeline and deal status.
• Represent customer voice internally to inform product and GTM strategy.
• Help define a repeatable sales motion and playbook for Kernel.

Skills

Closing experience

Technical selling

Full-cycle sales

Communication

Tools

CRM software

Sales demos/tools

Job description

About Kernel

Kernel is crazy fast, open source browser infrastructure for AI agents. We handle autoscaling, observability, and the messy details of web interaction, so developers can focus on what their agents do instead of how they do it.

Teams at Cash App, Rye, and 5000+ others use Kernel for deep research, QA automation, and real-time web analysis. We've raised $22M from Accel, YC, and Vercel.

If you're interested in building critical infrastructure for agents on the web, we'd love to chat.

About the role

You'll be one of the first members of a lean sales team. You'll own the full sales cycle for Kernel, from initial conversation to closed deal. That means prospecting and qualifying the right accounts, running discovery that gets to the real problems a customer is solving, and building relationships with the developers and technical leaders who'll rely on Kernel for their production systems.

This is a technical-lean AE role. You'll spend time understanding prospects' technical requirements, not just running a deck, and you'll lean on customer success & solutions, engineering, and product team members to keep technical questions from slowing down a deal.

What you'll do

• Own your pipeline end-to-end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, negotiation, and close

• Build and manage relationships with developers, engineering leaders, and technical decision-makers evaluating Kernel for production use

• Partner with solutions engineering, customer engineering/success, and engineering as needed to scope technical requirements and keep deals moving from demo to signed contract

• Give the team an accurate, up-to-date read on your pipeline and deal status

• Represent the voice of the customer internally, feeding market and competitive intelligence back into product and go-to-market strategy

• Help define what a repeatable sales motion looks like at Kernel - you're building the playbook, not just running one

What we're looking for

• 4+ years of closing experience in a sales role, ideally selling technical or developer-facing products

• Comfortable selling to technical buyers: you don't need to write code, but you can hold your own in a conversation about architecture, APIs, and how a product actually gets used

• Experience running a full-cycle sales process, from outbound or inbound lead through negotiation and close

• High tolerance for ambiguity - most of our customers are building things that don't have a playbook yet

• You use AI daily in your own workflow, and are excited to be in an AI-native space

• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the judgment to know when to loop in teammates versus close on your own

Even better:

• Experience selling developer tools, infrastructure, or API-first products

• Familiarity with AI agents, browser automation, or the broader agent tooling landscape

• Prior experience at an early-stage startup where you helped build the sales process, not just execute one

What you can expect as a Kernel

• Industry-competitive salary

• Above market equity

• Premium medical + dental and vision coverage + dependent coverage

• Small, trusting team of experienced GTM and engineering staff

• Default async with minimal bureaucracy

• Daily lunches on us

• Unlimited PTO

• 401k + company match

• Relocation assistance