EMEA Sales Lead

Firstwork; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Firstwork is hiring its first commercial European hire to own enterprise revenue across EMEA and to build the regional playbook. You will qualify pipeline and manage deals from first meeting through signature, while shaping the European motion and team structure with the CEO.

You will hire, coach and lead the pod, work with a Solutions Consultant and SDRs, and ensure accurate forecasts for the executive team. This role blends strategic leadership with hands-on selling in a fast-growing company.

Qualifications

• Seven+ years selling complex enterprise software with multi-six figure closes.
• Experience selling into staffing, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing or retail.
• Deals across multiple European markets and knowledge of procurement/regulators.
• Experience hiring and managing reps while maintaining personal quota.
• Executive presence to engage with Head of Compliance and CTO.
• Tech-enabled selling with AI tools for mapping, prep and pipeline hygiene.

Responsibilities

• Own enterprise revenue across EMEA from first meeting to signature.
• Build and qualify pipeline in staffing, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and retail.
• Turn North American playbook into a European, scalable motion.
• Hire the pod: SDRs, account executives, with CEO, initial five hires.
• Forecast accurately to guide executive planning.
• Provide field feedback to product while it matters.

Skills

Enterprise software sales

Industries experience

Multi-market experience

Leadership while quota-bearing

Executive presence

Tech-enabled selling

Executive resilience

Job description

About Firstwork

Labour markets are broken. Millions of people are ready to work and can’t start. Screening, right-to-work checks, contracts, onboarding and scheduling still run across disconnected systems, with hundreds of manual decisions in between. Firstwork builds AI agents that run frontline workforce operations end to end. We activate hundreds of thousands of workers a month globally for some of the world’s largest employers and staffing firms, working forward-deployed inside the customer’s operation. Backed by Y Combinator and Gradient (Google’s AI fund), with offices in New York, with London and Dubai opening later this year.

Why this role

European customers are not evaluating us out of curiosity. Workforce compliance has turned into a board-level risk and there are deadlines attached to it. The demand is already here. What we don’t have is coverage, or an enterprise motion that repeats.

You are the first commercial hire in Europe and you build the team around you. It is a player-coach role and it stays that way, because we are not going to put someone in charge of coaching a European motion; they have never run against European buyers themselves. You carry a quota while you hire. A Solutions Consultant joins alongside you, SDRs come after that, and how the pod fits together is your call.

None of this starts from zero. The North American playbook holds up on qualification, pricing, security review and technical validation. Your job is to work out which parts of it survive European procurement, works councils and regulators, rebuild the rest, and turn the result into the thing every rep in the region runs.

What you’ll do

• Own enterprise revenue across EMEA, and carry your own deals from first meeting through to signature

• Build and qualify pipeline in staffing, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and retail

• Turn the North American motion into a European playbook other people can run

• Hire the pod. SDRs, account executives, and with the CEO, the first five people on the team

• Forecast well enough that the exec team can plan the company against it

• Get what you hear in the field back to product while it still matters

What we’re looking for

• Seven or more years selling complex enterprise software, with six and seven figure closes you can talk us through in detail

• Time selling into staffing, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and/or retail

• Deals across more than one European market, so you know how procurement, works councils and regulators change the shape of a cycle

• Experience hiring and managing reps while still carrying your own number

• The ability to hold a room with a Head of Compliance and a CTO in it at the same time

• A territory run on tooling rather than headcount. AI for account mapping, call prep, proposals and pipeline hygiene, and we will ask to see the stack

• No difficulty being wrong in front of the CEO

If you have built a commercial team once and think the second one would be better, we should talk.

Firstwork is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or any other protected status.