Account Executive, Frontier AI

Clera; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 360,000 - 400,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera in San Francisco leads cutting-edge AI/ML initiatives for research labs and industry teams. This founding sales role will own commercial relationships across healthcare, robotics, and language model development, shaping what gets built through close collaboration with customers.

You will design the sales motion from the ground up, run technical discovery with research leaders, negotiate licensing and data agreements, and define pricing strategies to win complex enterprise deals.

Qualifications

• 3+ years selling technical products to technical buyers and owning complex deals from start to close.
• Experience selling to AI labs, robotics companies, data infrastructure firms, or research orgs.
• Understand training/evaluation of modern models, including post-training and reward design.
• Able to build account plans, map org structures, and define engagement strategies independently.
• Experience structuring enterprise deals, licensing, data agreements, and pricing.

Responsibilities

• Identify researchers and data leads with gaps your product closes.
• Build and own account plans for defined labs with buyers and bottlenecks.
• Run technical discovery conversations and translate findings into requirements.
• Structure and negotiate enterprise engagements, licensing data agreements, and pricing.
• Bring competitive and demand intelligence to inform roadmap decisions.
• Collaborate with expert networks to stay credible with technical buyers.
• Create the sales playbook from scratch.

Skills

Enterprise sales

Account planning

Negotiation

Technical product knowledge

Job description

About the Role

This is a founding sales role at an early-stage AI/ML company, where you will own commercial relationships with frontier research labs and applied AI teams across healthcare, robotics, and language model development. You will build the sales motion from the ground up, sitting at the intersection of product, customer discovery, and strategy, directly shaping what gets built based on what labs actually need.

What You'll Do

• Identify and engage the researchers and data leads inside target organizations who have reasoning gaps your product can close.

• Build and own account plans for a defined set of labs, mapping buyers, evaluation bottlenecks, and post-training challenges.

• Run technical discovery conversations with research and data leadership, translating findings into product requirements.

• Structure and negotiate enterprise engagements, licensing arrangements, and data agreements, owning pricing strategy and deal shape.

• Bring competitive and demand intelligence back into the company to inform roadmap decisions.

• Collaborate with expert networks to maintain technical credibility with deeply technical buyers.

• Create the sales playbook itself, with no existing motion to follow.

What We're Looking For

• 3 or more years selling technical products to technical buyers, with demonstrated ownership of complex deals from start to close.

• Direct experience selling to or working inside AI labs, robotics companies, data infrastructure firms, or research organizations.

• Fluency in how modern models are trained and evaluated, including post-training, evaluation design, and reward signal design.

• Proven ability to build account plans, map organizational structures, and define engagement strategies independently.

• Experience structuring enterprise deals including licensing arrangements, data agreements, and pricing strategy.

• Comfort operating with minimal process in early-stage environments where the product is still being defined.

• Prior experience as an early commercial hire at a seed or Series A stage company.

• Existing relationships with research or data teams at frontier AI labs is a strong plus.

• Background in healthcare, life sciences, regulated environments, robotics, autonomy, or embodied AI is a strong plus.

Compensation & Benefits

The on-target earnings range for this role is $360,000 to $400,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Location

Primary location is San Francisco, California. Remote candidates based in the United States will also be considered.