Founding Account Executive

Rime; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Rime in San Francisco seeks a founding Account Executive to own the full sales cycle from prospecting to signed contracts and to build the initial pipeline for a pioneering voice AI platform.

You’ll partner with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to run technical discovery, demo capabilities, and translate product value into clear business outcomes, while driving expansion across industries.

Qualifications

• A genuine hunter who builds own pipeline and moves deals with urgency.
• Technically fluent with APIs, AI pipelines, and developer workflows.
• Customer-obsessed with focus on outcomes beyond the close.
• Energized by hard problems, tailoring strategies for new verticals.
• Sharp communicator able to present to engineers and C-suite.

Responsibilities

• Own the full sales cycle from outbound to signed contract.
• Generate your own pipeline through outbound, events, and partners.
• Become a product expert, demo to engineering and product teams.
• Serve as a trusted advisor, deploying voice AI to move businesses forward.
• Inform the roadmap with market signals and customer feedback.
• Drive account expansion and long-term growth.

Skills

Hunter mindset

Technical fluency

Customer obsession

Problem solver

Clear communicator

Job description

Founding Account Executive

Location: San Francisco
Reports To: VP of Revenue

OTE: $250,000 - $300,000

About Rime

Rime builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our text-to-speech models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the pronunciation accuracy, latency, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand.

We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: voice AI isn't bottlenecked by model architecture. It's bottlenecked by data. So before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech, recorded and annotated by PhD linguists. That's our moat. It's also why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to convert into production.

We're backed by top-tier investors including Unusual Ventures, and we've built a team at the intersection of product, research, and craft. Building voice models is an art. We intend to master it.

Role Overview

Our revenue team has a unique mission to help customers understand the deep impact that highly capable AI voice models can bring to their business and users. This Founding Account Executive role is a mixture of technical understanding, vision, partnership, and value-driven strategy.

You’ll be a key driver of opportunities through the entire sales cycle, from prospecting and deal execution to long-term account growth. You’ll work with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help customers evolve their industry with AI.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in early-stage environments, loves building from zero, and is excited to help define how Rime’s voice AI technology is deployed across industries.

What You’ll Do

• Own the full sales cycle - from cold outbound to signed contract. You find your way to the right buyers, earn their trust, and close.

• Generate your own pipeline. You're a hunter who builds from zero - outbound, events, partner channels, whatever works.

• Become a product expert. Run technical discovery, demo credibly to engineering and product teams, and translate capability into a clear business case.

• Serve as a trusted advisor. Deeply understand your customers' priorities and help them deploy voice AI in ways that actually move their business forward.

• Inform the roadmap. Synthesize market signals, customer feedback, and competitive intel - what you learn in the field shapes what we build.

• Drive expansion. The initial contract is the floor. You build relationships that grow accounts over time.

Who You Are

• A genuine hunter. You create your own pipeline, move deals forward with urgency, and don't wait to be told what to do next.

• Technically fluent. You understand APIs, AI pipelines, and developer workflows - not as a talking point, but because you're genuinely curious.

• Customer-obsessed. You care about outcomes, not just signatures, and you build relationships that last beyond the close.

• Energized by hard problems. Bespoke deals, new verticals, and undefined playbooks don't intimidate you - they motivate you.

• A sharp communicator. You write clearly, present with confidence, and adapt from a platform engineer to a C-suite exec.

Why Join Rime

• Rime is an AI lab — you're not just selling software, you're working alongside the researchers and engineers building frontier voice models.

• Voice AI is at an inflection point. The companies that win now will define the category - and you'll be one of the first commercial leaders helping shape that.

• Direct exposure to how frontier AI gets built and deployed at scale, across some of the most demanding industries in the world.

• Competitive compensation with meaningful equity and real performance upside - we want to build a small, high-performing team that has real ownership.

At Rime, we...

• Are outliers

• Cut through the hype to focus on the craft

• Move fast with agency and freedom

• Maintain a growth mindset, finding joy in the struggle

• Do the right things, knowing that it'll lead to making money

  If that sounds like you too, you'll be a great fit for Rime!