Founding Strategic Account Executive

River AI Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); Presencial; USD 200.000 - 350.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

Relocation assistance

Visa sponsorship

Descripción de la vacante

River AI Inc. is seeking a Founding Account Executive to lead enterprise sales for River API. You will target high-value industries, align customer needs with our post-training open-weight models, and close pilot-to-ownership deals.

Work closely with founders and engineering teams to translate requirements into concrete opportunities, shaping GTM playbooks while building scalable revenue. This role offers a strong base and equity, with visa sponsorship.

Formación

• Significant experience in enterprise sales, partnerships, or go-to-market roles in AI, developer infrastructure, cloud, or enterprise software.
• Proven track record of building a product or business from 0 to 1, including initial market creation and early customers.
• Experience owning revenue targets and navigating complex enterprise sales cycles.
• Strong ability to communicate with both technical stakeholders and business executives.
• Technical fluency from STEM education or engineering/work experience, or selling technical products.
• Demonstrated ownership, judgment, and bias for action in fast-moving environments.
• Excellent relationship-building, negotiation, and written/verbal communication skills.

Responsabilidades

• Own revenue growth and enterprise adoption for River API, from strategy through execution.
• Identify and prioritize industries, customer profiles, and use cases where custom post-trained models add value.
• Build relationships with prospective customers and guide them from exploration through pilot, deployment, and expansion.
• Develop and manage a pipeline of enterprise opportunities, partnerships, and distribution channels.
• Contribute to River API’s early sales playbook, including positioning, qualification, pricing, pilots, procurement, and expansion.
• Collaborate with engineering/research teams to translate customer needs into product requirements and improvements.
• Design technical demonstrations and proofs of concept that communicate the value of post-training open-weight models.
• Establish partnerships with model providers, cloud/gpu infra companies, system integrators, and other AI ecosystem players.
• Build scalable go-to-market systems, processes, and metrics while engaging in closing critical early customers.
• Represent River with customers, partners, developers, and the broader AI community.

Conocimientos

Enterprise sales

Strategic partnerships

Executive communication

Industry knowledge AI/tech

Deal closing

Sales cycle management

Descripción del empleo

At River AI, our mission is to create personal AI owned and shaped by each individual. To achieve this, we are building the full stack required for people and organizations to create AI models of their own—from training infrastructure and open-weight model post-training to personal hardware and next-generation interfaces.

Who we are

We are scientists, engineers, and builders from the industry’s leading technology companies and AI labs. Our team has experience scaling consumer products to hundreds of millions of users and building the infrastructure behind frontier AI systems.

About the Role

We are seeking experienced Founding Account Executives to drive the growth andadoption of River API.

River API makes it easy for companies and individuals to post-train open-weight models using their own data, creating models that are more effective, economical, and specialized for their use cases. Your goal will be to turn this technical capability into arapidly growing business, with a particular focus on creating and closing enterprisesales campaigns.

You help create critical parts of River API’s go-to-market motion, from identifyinghigh-value customer segments and closing early strategic accounts to developingpartnerships and building repeatable systems for scaling adoption. This is a highlyentrepreneurial, cross-functional role for a small group who can operate across sales,partnerships, product, and technical customer engagement.

What You’ll Do

• Own revenue growth and enterprise adoption for River API, from strategy through execution.
• Identify and prioritize the industries, customer profiles, and use cases where custom post-trained models create the greatest value.
• Build relationships with prospective customers, understand their technical and business requirements, and guide them from initial exploration through pilot, deployment, and expansion.
• Develop and manage a pipeline of enterprise opportunities, strategic partnerships, and distribution channels.
• Contribute to River API’s early sales playbook, including positioning, qualification, pricing, pilots, procurement, and account expansion.
• Work directly with engineering and research teams to translate customer needs into product requirements and improvements.
• Design technical demonstrations, proofs of concept, and customer solutions that clearly communicate the value of post-training open-weight models.
• Establish partnerships with model providers, cloud and GPU infrastructure companies, systems integrators, consultancies, and other participants in the AI ecosystem.
• Build scalable GTM systems, processes, and metrics while remaining deeply involved in closing River’s most important early customers.
• Represent River with customers, partners, developers, and the broader AI community.

Skills & Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Significant experience in enterprise sales, business development, partnerships, or go-to-market roles at an AI, developer infrastructure, cloud, or enterprise software company.
• A demonstrated track record of building a product or business from 0 to 1, including developing an initial market, winning early customers, and creating a repeatable growth motion.
• Experience owning meaningful revenue targets and navigating complex enterprise sales cycles.
• Strong understanding of how organizations evaluate, purchase, deploy, and expand technical products.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical stakeholders and business executives.
• Technical fluency developed through a STEM education, engineering or technical work experience, or extensive experience selling highly technical products.
• Exceptional ownership, judgment, and bias for action in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Strong relationship-building, negotiation, and written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

(We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all of these)

• Experience selling or partnering around foundation models, model training, inference infrastructure, developer platforms, data infrastructure, or other AI products.
• Familiarity with open-weight models, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, model evaluation, inference, or enterprise AI deployment.
• Experience personally closing early enterprise customers before building or scaling a broader sales organization.
• An existing network among AI-native companies, enterprise AI leaders, cloud providers, model developers, or systems integrators.
• Experience developing partnerships that materially contributed to product distribution or revenue.
• Comfort discussing APIs, model architectures, training workflows, data requirements, security, and deployment constraints with engineering and machine learning teams.
• Experience working closely with founders, researchers, and engineers to shape product strategy based on customer feedback.
• Compensation: Depending on experience and skills the expected base pay is $200,000 - $350,000 USD per year, plus equity.
• Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance; unlimited PTO; and relocation assistance as needed.
• Visa Sponsorship: We sponsor visas and are committed to supporting the process for the right candidate.