Founding Strategic Account Executive (AI Infra & Inference)

OrcaRouter; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

OrcaRouter is seeking a Founding Strategic Account Executive (AI Infra & Inference) based in the San Francisco Bay Area to drive strategic relationships with AI-native startups, enterprises, and infrastructure partners. You will identify and qualify opportunities, conduct discovery, and design architectures with product and engineering, guiding complex deals through to contract and expansion.

You will help shape pricing, packaging, and positioning for AI inference offerings, contribute to

Qualifications

• Proven experience in enterprise or strategic sales for developer infrastructure, cloud platforms, or AI/ML products.
• Strong understanding of AI inference, LLM ecosystems, APIs, and developer tooling.
• Ability to conduct deep discovery and translate requirements into value propositions.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills with C-level stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own relationships with high-impact customers in SF Bay Area.
• Lead discovery conversations and design solution architectures with product/engineering.
• Manage complex sales cycles from contact through negotiation and post-close expansion.
• Refine go-to-market motions, create account plans, forecast pipeline, partner with founders.

Skills

Enterprise sales

Strategic deals

AI/ML knowledge

Discovery & solution design

Executive communication

GTM process

Startup experience

On-site collaboration

Job description

Company Description

OrcaRouter is a unified AI inference gateway and open AI infrastructure platform that gives developers a single API key to access over 200 models across leading providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, xAI, and others. The platform offers adaptive routing, intelligent fallback, unified billing, bring-your-own-key options, and zero markup, while supporting both OpenAI-compatible APIs and native Anthropic and Gemini endpoints. In addition to the hosted gateway, OrcaRouter actively builds in the open, providing self-hosted routing infrastructure, MCP tooling, SDK integrations, and open-weight model releases aligned with ongoing research. The team is deeply engaged with the broader AI ecosystem through code, models, and documentation shared across Hugging Face, GitHub, Ollama, arXiv, and public docs, creating a high-velocity environment for those passionate about AI infrastructure.

Role Description

The Founding Strategic Account Executive (AI Infra & Inference) is a full-time, on-site role based in the San Francisco Bay Area, responsible for developing and owning relationships with high-impact customers across AI-native startups, enterprise innovation teams, and infrastructure partners. Day-to-day, this role will identify and qualify strategic opportunities, lead discovery conversations, design solution architectures in collaboration with product and engineering, and manage complex sales cycles from initial contact through contract negotiation and post-close expansion. The position involves building and refining the go-to-market motion, creating account plans, forecasting pipeline, and partnering closely with founders to incorporate customer feedback into product strategy. The individual will also represent OrcaRouter at industry events, contribute to sales enablement materials, and help define pricing, packaging, and positioning for AI inference and infrastructure offerings.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in enterprise or strategic sales for developer infrastructure, cloud platforms, or AI/ML products, with a track record of closing complex deals and managing long sales cycles.
• Strong understanding of AI inference, LLM ecosystems, APIs, and developer tooling, including familiarity with major model providers and open-source AI communities.
• Ability to conduct deep discovery, translate technical requirements into clear value propositions, and collaborate with technical teams on solution design and proof-of-concept engagements.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills, with comfort engaging C-level stakeholders, technical leaders, and product decision-makers.
• Experience building or refining early-stage GTM processes, including pipeline generation strategies, account planning, and sales operations in a startup environment.
• High degree of ownership, adaptability, and willingness to work in a fast-paced, highly collaborative, and iterative setting as a founding member of the commercial team.
• Ability to work on-site in the