Principal Account Executive

Critical Propulsion; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Critical Propulsion is seeking a senior enterprise sales professional to own the revenue relationship with CIOs and executive sponsors. You will lead conversations from first contact through Ignition workshop, closing engagements that leverage our agentic AI delivery framework.

Successfully navigating escalations and leveraging real-world delivery depth in targeted verticals will be key. You will operate autonomously with direct access to founders and a fast-paced, outcomes-driven culture.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with agentic AI tooling and related platforms.
• Proven track record opening net-new logos at CIO/executive level.
• Deep delivery exposure inside enterprise services or consulting.
• Ability to sell a fundamentally different delivery model to enterprise buyers.
• Existing relationships in enterprise or professional services technology.

Responsibilities

• Own the full sales cycle from outreach to close for enterprise engagements.
• Manage and nurture a live pipeline; prevent deals from stalling.
• Partner with founders on account strategy and commercial terms.
• Position and sell the agentic delivery model (Ignition/Pulse/Amplify) to executives.

Skills

Agentic AI tooling

CIO relationships

Executive-level selling

Enterprise relationships

Vertical fluency

Tools

Claude Chat/Cowork/Code

Cursor

Copilot

Job description

What you'll own

The revenue relationship with enterprise clients who need a fundamentally different delivery model, not just a cheaper one. Open the account yourself. Build trust with the CIO or executive sponsor who could back an engagement, and turn the first several conversations into an Ignition workshop. Delivery earns the trust. That gap, between a relationship and a contract, is yours to close.

This isn't a product sale or an infrastructure sale. If your background is selling a platform, a tool, or a SKU, this role will feel foreign fast. We need someone who's sat close enough to real app development and data engineering delivery, inside a services or consulting model, to have earned the scar tissue: the escalations, the blown timelines, the calls where an executive wants to know why the thing that was supposed to work doesn't. Writing the code isn't the requirement. Being in the room when it broke is. Agentic AI experience is a major plus, not a requirement.

We aren't a GSI, and we don't sell to our clients like one. If that's the pitch you're used to, layers between you and the client, someone else owning the relationship, you won't like it here.

A piece of product is yours too. Real usage against real prospects, yours, feeds directly into what our proprietary AI business development tool builds next. We eat our own dog food here, and we expect you to do the same.

How we build

Critical Propulsion pairs senior consultants with AI agents inside Amplify, our agentic delivery framework, to build products in 5-day Pulse cycles. Consultants own the judgment: what to build, what ships, which gate a release has to clear. Agents handle the volume: code generation, testing, the repeatable work a team of ten used to grind through.

Ignition is how a client starts with us: a 5-day workshop that ends in a working prototype, a banded backlog, and a full engagement plan. Pulse is the cadence we deliver in after that. Amplify is the agentic framework running underneath both, covering backlog banding, agent-led build, PR review, release gates, and live reporting.

The pitch you're carrying isn't "we're cheaper" or "we're faster." It's that the offshore and staff-aug math has broken, senior-led and agent-amplified delivery is the new baseline, and the firms building that capability now are setting the terms everyone else competes against later. That case has to be one you believe well enough to defend against an executive who's heard every delivery pitch there is.

What we expect

Sit through enough executive escalations on app dev and data delivery issues, and the industry traps become second nature. When concerns come up, triaging and remediating them is the response, not nodding along.

Feed the feature backlog for our proprietary AI business development tool continually: what's missing, what's broken, what actually moves a deal, based on real usage, not hypotheticals.

Walking a prospect through Ignition, Pulse, and Amplify without sounding like you're reciting a deck means understanding why the sequence matters: prototype and backlog first, cadence second, agentic framework underneath both.

No warm intro required to build relationships with CIOs and executive sponsors, though you'll take one.

Real depth in at least one enterprise vertical is required: healthcare, financial services, professional services, whatever you've actually lived inside. Buyers trust someone fluent in their world faster than someone generically "enterprise." We're not fixed on which vertical. We are fixed on the depth being real, not resume-deep.

Running the full cycle is the job: first outreach, discovery, positioning Ignition as the low-risk way in, and closing the contract that lets the swarm start Pulse cycles.

Manage a live pipeline without letting deals go stale. Know which ones need another touch and which need to be walked away from.

Partner with the founders on account strategy, but don't wait on us to move a deal forward. The pipeline is yours.

Operate autonomously. No pipeline reviews that could be a two-line update. No forecast decks that could be a number and a reason.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with agentic AI tooling, Claude Chat/Cowork/Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar, or experience selling engagements where agentic delivery was the differentiator. This is a major plus.
• An understanding of how delivery actually works inside the vertical you'd be targeting, not just a read on it from selling into it from the outside, so how buying decisions actually get made and who holds budget aren't a mystery.
• A track record opening net-new logos at the CIO or executive level, not just managing accounts someone else opened.
• Comfort selling a model that's genuinely different instead of a known category with an established RFP process. Our model challenges the status quo and we expect you to do the same.
• Existing relationships in enterprise or professional services technology. A warm list beats starting from nothing on day one.
• A number carried solo before, without an SDR team feeding you meetings, is the baseline. Our agentic business development tool does real work for you, but turning what it gives you into a deal still takes someone who can hold a room.
• Traveling in a pack is fine. If there's a Solutions Architect or Delivery leader you've closed and delivered with before who'd come with you, say so. We're glad to talk to all of you at once.

What we don't filter on

• Which industry you come from. We care about the depth of your vertical fluency, not which vertical it is.
• Years of experience as a number. If you can open a decision-maker's calendar and close the deal, the number on your resume doesn't matter.
• Whether "sales" has ever been in your title. If you've delivered engagements and can make the case for why this model is different, that matters more than a job title history.
• Big-name logo pedigree over demonstrated ability to open doors and close them yourself.

What you get

• Leadership from founders who've built and led large services portfolios inside firms you'd recognize. A growth-first, sales-oriented organization that doesn't cut integrity to get there.
• Direct access to the founders on every deal. No layers between you and the decision-makers on scope or commercials.
• A model that's genuinely easier to sell than it sounds once you've lived the old way. Ignition is a smaller "yes" than a six-month SOW nobody can picture.
• Deals that move in weeks, not quarters. You'll know fast whether a conversation is turning into a signed engagement.
• Intellectual curiosity is a must. We have a proven model for relationship building and sales qualification, and we're willing to invest in the right person willing to invest time in understanding our tactical approach.
• $120-180K + commission

Critical Propulsion is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate every candidate on their ability to do the work, and nothing else.

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Location: United States (Remote)
Department: Business Development
Employment Type: Full-Time
Minimum Experience: Senior Manager/Supervisor