Founding Account Executive | Database Optimization

Cast AI; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Learning budget

Remote-first global environment

Team events

Job summary

Cast AI is seeking a Founding Account Executive to own the complete DBO sales cycle, from targeted prospecting to close, driving net-new ARR for our autonomous database optimization solution. You will build pipeline through outbound activities and inbound demand while coordinating with product marketing and engineering for proofs of concept.

The role emphasizes customer discovery, technical demonstrations, and a scalable sales playbook.

Qualifications

• Five or more years of quota-carrying B2B technology sales experience, including enterprise or upper mid-market customers.

Responsibilities

• Own the full DBO sales cycle, from targeted prospecting and sales-ready inbound opportunities through discovery, demonstration, proof of concept, negotiation, and close.
• Build a meaningful portion of your pipeline through focused outbound activity while converting demand created through organic search, paid programs, events, partnerships, and AI-assisted nurture.
• Lead credible discovery with DBAs, application and platform engineers, FinOps teams, and engineering leaders to understand database cost, latency, scale, reliability, and operational challenges.
• Deliver standard DBO product demonstrations independently and explain how autonomous caching, connection pooling, AI-driven query rewriting, and automated tuning apply to a customer’s environment.
• Define a clear value hypothesis, entry criteria, measurable success criteria, and mutual action plan before beginning a proof of concept.
• Partner with Product and Engineering throughout discovery and qualified proofs of concept, bringing the right technical expertise into architecture, security, compatibility, and performance discussions.
• Translate technical findings into quantified business cases for engineering leaders and executive buyers.
• Develop champions and multi-thread relationships across technical, economic, security, procurement, and executive stakeholders.
• Maintain disciplined opportunity qualification, pipeline management, and forecasting, and provide clear commercial insights to leadership.
• Capture customer feedback, objections, competitive patterns, and win/loss insights to improve the product, positioning, and sales playbook.
• Represent Cast AI at selected database, cloud-native, and infrastructure conferences and customer events.
• Use AI-powered workflows to improve account research, preparation, follow-up, pipeline analysis, and selling effectiveness.

Skills

Quota-carrying B2B technology sales

Enterprise / upper mid-market

New-business targets

Database sales experience

Technical discovery & product demos

Outbound prospecting

Cross-functional collaboration

Travel up to 25%

Strong written and verbalcommunication

Job description

Why Cast AI?

Cast AI is an automation platform that operates cloud-native and AI infrastructure at scale. By embedding autonomous decision-making directly into Kubernetes and cloud environments, Cast AI continuously optimizes performance, reliability, and efficiency in production. The old way doesn't work. As Kubernetes and AI environments grow, manual decisions don’t. Cast AI replaces tickets, alerts, and manual tuning with continuous automation that adapts infrastructure as conditions change. Efficiency and cost savings follow naturally from that automation. Over 2,100 companies already rely on Cast AI, including Akamai, BMW, Cisco, FICO, HuggingFace, NielsenIQ, Swisscom, and TGS.

Global team, diverse perspectives

We're headquartered in Miami, but our impact is international. We take a global and intentional approach to diversity. Today, Cast AI operates across 34 countries spanning Europe, North America, Latin America, and APAC, bringing a wide range of perspectives into how we build and lead.

Unicorn momentum

In January 2026, we achieved unicorn status with a strategic investment from Pacific Alliance Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Shinsegae Group (a $50+ billion Korean conglomerate). Our valuation now exceeds $1 billion, and we're just getting started.

Join us as we build the future of autonomous infrastructure.

About The Role

Cast AI Database Optimizer (DBO) helps organizations improve database performance while reducing infrastructure cost and operational effort. It combines autonomous query caching, connection pooling, AI-driven query rewriting, and automated performance tuning for PostgreSQL and MySQL environments. Instead of stopping at recommendations that engineering teams must implement themselves, DBO takes tuning actions automatically. It works with self-hosted, cloud-hosted, and managed databases and does not require application code changes.

We are hiring a Founding Account Executive to develop and close new business for DBO as we turn early customer validation into a repeatable commercial motion. You will own the complete sales cycle: creating and converting pipeline, leading technical discovery and standard product demonstrations, coordinating proofs of concept, building the business case, and negotiating and closing new customers.

This is a hands‑on individual‑contributor role with unusual influence. You will work directly with Cast AI's founders and DBO Product and Engineering leaders to refine our ideal customer profile, sharpen our positioning, and turn customer learning into a scalable sales playbook. As the team grows, there will be opportunities to take on broader scope and help shape how the commercial organization develops.

Our primary focus is net‑new customer acquisition in North America. The target market includes upper mid‑market and emerging‑enterprise organizations with meaningful database scale, as well as fast‑growing cloud‑native companies that offer faster adoption and land‑and‑expand potential. You will be supported by product marketing, inbound demand generation, and AI‑assisted lead nurture. Cast AI will also bring the right Product and Engineering resources into discovery and qualified proofs of concept, giving you strong technical support while you remain accountable for the customer relationship and commercial process.

Success will be measured through new annual recurring revenue, net‑new customers, qualified pipeline, referenceable wins, forecast quality, and evidence that the DBO sales motion is becoming repeatable.

Requirements

• Five or more years of quota‑carrying B2B technology sales experience, including enterprise or upper mid‑market customers.
• A consistent record of meeting or exceeding new‑business targets and winning net‑new logos.
• Experience selling database, DBaaS, caching, data infrastructure, database observability, or application‑performance solutions to technical organizations. Adjacent infrastructure experience may qualify when it includes repeated sales to DBAs or database‑owning engineering teams.
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL or MySQL and familiarity with concepts such as query performance, query optimization, caching, connection pooling, read replicas, and automated database tuning.
• Experience leading initial technical discovery and standard product demonstrations, with good judgment about when to involve Product or Engineering specialists.
• Ability to explore a customer's architecture, connect technical pain to business value, and recognize when Product or Engineering should join a deeper discussion.
• Experience running time‑bound technical evaluations or proofs of concept in partnership with customer and engineering teams.
• Ability to create pipeline through focused outbound activity in addition to converting company‑generated demand.
• Experience navigating multi‑threaded sales involving DBAs, engineers, engineering leadership, security, procurement, and executive buyers.
• Strong qualification, pipeline management, and forecasting discipline.
• Comfort operating without a mature playbook and a demonstrated bias toward action, ownership, and learning.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to travel up to 25% for customer meetings, industry events, and periodic collaboration with our European Product and Engineering teams.

Nice To Have

• Experience at a database platform, DBaaS, caching, database‑performance, or observability company.
• A record of closing initial lands in the $50,000‑$100,000 ARR range and expanding them over time.
• Experience building an early sales motion for a new product or category.
• Strong technical fluency in relational databases and cloud infrastructure without losing focus on business outcomes.
• Experience selling effectively in a 60‑90‑day evaluation cycle that includes a proof of concept.
• Experience using customer and deal evidence to influence product strategy, messaging, and go‑to‑market execution.

Responsibilities

• Own the full DBO sales cycle, from targeted prospecting and sales‑ready inbound opportunities through discovery, demonstration, proof of concept, negotiation, and close.
• Build a meaningful portion of your pipeline through focused outbound activity while converting demand created through organic search, paid programs, events, partnerships, and AI‑assisted nurture.
• Lead credible discovery with DBAs, application and platform engineers, FinOps teams, and engineering leaders to understand database cost, latency, scale, reliability, and operational challenges.
• Deliver standard DBO product demonstrations independently and explain how autonomous caching, connection pooling, AI‑driven query rewriting, and automated tuning apply to a customer's environment.
• Define a clear value hypothesis, entry criteria, measurable success criteria, and mutual action plan before beginning a proof of concept.
• Partner with Product and Engineering throughout discovery and qualified proofs of concept, bringing the right technical expertise into architecture, security, compatibility, and performance discussions.
• Translate technical findings into quantified business cases for engineering leaders and executive buyers.
• Develop champions and multi‑thread relationships across technical, economic, security, procurement, and executive stakeholders.
• Maintain disciplined opportunity qualification, pipeline management, and forecasting, and provide clear commercial insights to leadership.
• Capture customer feedback, objections, competitive patterns, and win/loss insights to improve the product, positioning, and sales playbook.
• Represent Cast AI at selected database, cloud‑native, and infrastructure conferences and customer events.
• Use AI‑powered workflows to improve account research, preparation, follow‑up, pipeline analysis, and selling effectiveness.

What’s in it for you?

• Ground‑floor ownership of a new product line's go‑to‑market motion, with direct access to Cast AI's founders and product leaders.
• The opportunity to influence how the DBO commercial team and sales playbook develop as the business grows.
• Join a fast‑growing unicorn at the forefront of cloud‑native and database automation.
• A flexible, remote‑first global environment.
• Equity options.
• Learning budget for professional and personal development.
• Team‑building budget and company events to connect with colleagues.
• Equipment budget to ensure you have everything you need.

Hiring process

• Screening call with Recruiter
• Hiring Manager interview
• 1-2 additional interviews based on the role
• Culture Check interview with an executive
• As part of our standard hiring process, we would like to inform you that a background check may be conducted at the final stage of recruitment through our third‑party provider, Checkr.
• Please note that Cast AI does not provide any form of visa sponsorship/work permit.