Strategic Account Executive - Frontier Labs

Madrona Venture Labs

United States

Hybrid

USD 157,000 - 192,000

Full time

14 days+

Application generator

Turn this role into an interview — a resume and cover letter built around what this employer wants.

Get past ATS filters

Benefits offered by this job

401k matching

28 days annual leave

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Catered lunches (Pittsburgh office)

Flexible work arrangements

Visa sponsorship available

Job summary

Gray Swan is seeking a senior enterprise sales professional to own the full commercial cycle for frontier lab accounts. You will land new lab accounts, convert engagements into ongoing programs, and expand relationships as evaluation needs grow.

You will report to the SVP of Frontier Lab Safety and collaborate with a Strategic Partnership Manager handling technical scoping and delivery. This is a small, high-trust market where credibility is earned through technical fluency and discretion.

Qualifications

5+ years closing enterprise or professional services deals with long cycles.
Fluency in AI safety concepts and model testing best practices.
Experience selling into AI labs, research orgs, or government bodies.

Responsibilities

Own the full commercial cycle for frontier lab accounts: discovery, scoping, pricing, contract, close.
Manage a quota including new logos and account expansions; renewals and upsell are central.
Set the commercial frame with internal teams to ensure scopes are sellable and deliverable.
Drive procurement, legal, and security reviews while maintaining multi-month momentum.
Build relationships across research, safety, policy, and procurement; the signer is often not the champion.
Represent Gray Swan at conferences and standards discussions to shape the market.

Skills

Enterprise sales

Complex deals

AI safety knowledge

NDA handling

Account growth

Job description

About Gray Swan

Gray Swan is on a mission to empower the world to use AI safely and securely. We evaluate AI models for the leading frontier labs along with building real-time threat detection and adaptive adversarial red teaming agents for teams deploying AI.

We're a team of approximately 50 people, well-funded, growing quickly. Our work directly influences how the world deploys AI agents and systems at scale..

Learn more about how we work

The Role

Our frontier lab business is Gray Swan's most strategic. We evaluate models for the leading AI labs before those models ship. This role owns the commercial side of those relationships end to end.

You will report to our SVP of Frontier Lab Safety and work alongside a Strategic Partnership Manager who owns technical scoping and delivery. You own the number: landing new lab accounts, converting first engagements into ongoing programs, and expanding accounts as their evaluation needs grow.

This is a small, high-trust market. A few dozen people worldwide decide how frontier AI gets evaluated, and they talk to each other. Credibility here is earned through technical fluency, discretion, and consistency, not volume outreach.

What You’ll Do:

Own the full commercial cycle for a portfolio of frontier lab accounts: first conversation, scoping, pricing, contract, close.

Carry a quota spanning both new logos and expansion within existing accounts. Most of our growth comes from deepening engagements that already exist, so renewal and upsell are as central to the role as new business.

Set the commercial frame on engagements while our Strategic Partnership Manager and research team set the technical one, so that scopes are both sellable and deliverable.

Move deals through procurement, legal, and security review at organizations that take contracting extremely seriously, maintaining momentum across multi-month cycles.

Build relationships across research, safety, policy, and procurement functions. The champion and the signer are rarely the same person here.

Bring the field back inside: what labs and agencies are being asked to prove, what they are being asked to prove it against, and where our evaluation offering needs to go next.

Represent Gray Swan at the conferences, workshops, and standards conversations where this market is being defined.

Who You Are:

5+ years closing complex six-figure-plus enterprise or professional services deals with long, consultative, multi-stakeholder cycles.

Enough fluency in AI safety and evaluation to hold a real conversation about model testing, red teaming, and agentic risk. You do not need to be a researcher, but you do need to be genuinely conversant with technical buyers.

Experience selling into or working alongside AI labs, research organizations, or government and regulatory bodies.

A record of growing accounts rather than only landing them: renewals, expansions, and multi-year programs you can speak to specifically.

Experience operating under NDA with pre-release or otherwise sensitive customer information.

This is not …

Not a delivery role. Our Strategic Partnership Manager owns scope-to-milestone execution; you own the commercial relationship.

Not a broad enterprise territory. Our Account Executives cover financial services, healthcare, and insurance. Your accounts are frontier labs and some government evaluation bodies.

Not a management role. This is a senior individual contributor seat on a team we expect to grow.

If you don’t have 100% of these, you should still seriously consider applying. We care more about what you can do than your credentials.

You’ll Thrive Here If You:

Are energized by a market that did not exist three years ago and is being written as you sell into it.

Are discreet. You will be privy to sensitive commercial and research information.

Are motivated by ownership, accountability, and upside rather than rigid structure.

Would rather be the person a head of safety calls first than the person with the highest activity metrics.

What We Offer:

We offer a competitive compensation package designed to reward impact and incentivize growth. Our compensation philosophy is informed by our current valuation and recent industry data.

Compensation: $157k-$192k + commission ($314-$384k OTE) and meaningful equity package

Benefits: