Head of Sales

Based in Mountain View, CA, Cyngn is a publicly-traded autonomous technology company. We deploy self-driving industrial vehicles - specifically autonomous tuggers - to factories, warehouses, and other facilities throughout North America. To build this emergent technology, we are looking for innovative, motivated, and experienced leaders to join us and move this field forward. If you like to build, tinker, and create with a team of trusted and passionate colleagues, then Cyngn is the place for you.

Key reasons to join Cyngn:

We are small and big.

With under 100 employees, Cyngn operates with the energy of a startup. On the other hand, we’re publicly traded. This means our employees not only work in close-knit teams with mentorship from company leaders—they also get access to the liquidity of our publicly-traded equity.

We build today and deploy tomorrow.

Our autonomous vehicles aren’t just test concepts—they’re deployed to real clients right now. That means your work will have a tangible, visible impact.

We aren’t robots. We just develop them.

We’re a welcoming, diverse team of sharp thinkers and kind humans. Collaboration and trust drive our creative environment. At Cyngn, everyone’s perspective matters—and that’s what powers our innovation.

About the role

You're a hybrid sales leader — as comfortable running your own strategic deal as you are building the team and process behind a whole book of business. You've led mid-market sales organizations before, and you know the difference between managing a forecast and actually owning it: you can tell the difference between a deal that's genuinely on track and one that's optimistic, and you'd rather deliver the unvarnished number than the comfortable one.

You're drawn to selling technical products into industrial, logistics, or adjacent markets, where the buying process runs through multiple stakeholders and the product story has to be grounded in real capability, not just positioning. You're energized by the build — standing up territory design, qualification methodology, and a forecast cadence where none existed before — and you don't need a fully‑formed playbook handed to you to get moving.

You coach through deal reviews and call feedback, not just a dashboard, and you take real satisfaction in watching an individual contributor grow into quota‑carrying consistency or into their first management role. You work well across functions — with Marketing on what's sellable today, with Engineering on the differentiation story, and with HR on the incentive design that makes the whole system pull in the same direction.

What you’ll do

• Own sales strategy and execution for the mid‑market sector, plus the enterprise book at hire.
• Lead the mid‑market sales team (3–4 AEs near term, plus BDR support), including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
• Set territory design, qualification methodology, pipeline stages, and forecast cadence, building on the existing Revenue Operations foundation.
• Run a weekly, deal‑specific forecast process: gap to target and the plan to close it.
• Work alongside AEs on key mid‑market and enterprise deals, including executive‑level escalation on strategic customer calls, and join routine site visits with the account team.
• Represent the customer‑facing organization to the CEO and executive team, with accurate, unvarnished reporting on pipeline and risk.
• Partner with Marketing to align messaging and content to what is sellable today, and set the priorities Marketing executes against.
• Partner with Engineering to build a defensible product differentiation story grounded in current capabilities.
• Support the CFO with compensation and incentive design for the sales organization, in partnership with HR.

Priorities: 3-6-12 Month Goals

First 90 Days

• Complete a full pipeline and CRM audit across the mid‑market and enterprise book, and assess forecast accuracy against actuals from prior quarters.
• Meet individually with every AE and BDR to assess skill level, deal load, and coaching needs.
• Establish a weekly forecast and pipeline review cadence, and identify the top gaps in territory design or qualification methodology.

By 6 Months

• Implement a defined territory design and qualification methodology (e.g., MEDDICC or similar), adopted consistently across the team.
• Bring forecast accuracy (committed vs. closed) to a reliable, quarter‑over‑quarter standard.
• Establish a regular operating cadence with Marketing on messaging/content priorities and with Engineering on the differentiation story.
• Make progress on any near‑term hiring needs for the mid‑market team, with a clear onboarding and ramp plan for new reps.

By 12 Months

• Demonstrate measurable improvement in pipeline coverage, win rate, and quota attainment distribution across the team.
• Show reduced time‑to‑productivity for new reps and low regretted attrition in the sales org.
• Have partnered with HR on a finalized compensation and incentive plan that supports the mid‑market motion.
• Be recognized by the CEO and executive team as a source of accurate, trusted pipeline and forecast reporting.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in B2B sales, including 4+ years managing AE teams at a Senior Manager level or above.
• Experience in industrial automation, robotics, logistics, or adjacent markets.
• Demonstrated experience leading a mid‑market sector within a sales organization.
• Proven forecast and pipeline discipline in a CRM.
• Track record of coaching reps to consistent quota attainment.
• Experience selling technical products with multi‑stakeholder buying groups.
• Fluency in a structured sales methodology (e.g., MEDDICC, Challenger, or similar) and outbound prospecting frameworks.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience within a distribution or logistics industry.
• Experience with hardware.
• CapEx sales cycles within the last ~10 years.
• Experience partnering with HR on commission plan design.
• Experience within a fast‑paced, small team or startup environment.
• Health benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision) through Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, and Guardian, with multiple plan tiers to choose from
• Ancillary benefits including accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity plans (Voya)
• Company-paid basic life insurance, plus voluntary (supplemental) life for you and your dependents
• Short‑term and long‑term disability insurance, fully paid by Cyngn
• HSA and FSA (Health & Dependent Daycare)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Company 401(k)
• Flexible PTO policy
• Daily lunches for in‑office employees and fully‑stocked kitchen with snacks and beverages

What You Can Expect (Cyngn’s interview process)

• A real person will review your application
• We’ll kick off the process with a one‑sided video interview where you’ll share a little more about yourself and we’ll get some basic questions out of the way
• A Recruiter touch point will go over the process in more detail and answer your questions
• A 45‑minute interview with the hiring manager
• A full‑loop interview process consisting of 3–4 additional conversations to gauge technical and soft skills and culture fit.
• A final onsite interview with the team.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgement. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Cyngn is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, marital status, familial status, military or veteran status, citizenship status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. This policy applies to all aspects of employment, including recruitment, hiring, compensation, benefits, training, promotion, discipline, and termination.

If you require accommodation during the application or interview process due to a disability, please let us know and we will work with you to provide reasonable accommodation

The pay range for this role is:

180,000 - 200,000 USD per year (Remote (United States))