VP of Sales

VP Of Sales

The VP of Sales will be a critical driver of Acceldata's next stage of growth, owning North America's new logo ARR while building and scaling a world-class enterprise sales team. You will combine strategic revenue leadership with hands-on execution, leading a high-performing team of enterprise Account Executives and creating a culture grounded in sales methodologies, accountability, and operational excellence. Beyond hitting revenue targets, you will develop top-tier talent, improve forecast accuracy, strengthen pipeline health, and elevate overall sales execution quality across the business. This role sits at the center of Acceldata's go-to-market strategy and directly impacts the company's ability to scale enterprise adoption. You will help shape how Acceldata positions itself in a competitive data observability, data quality, and data management market, influencing enterprise buying decisions with C-level executives and technical leaders alike. Through close partnership with Product, Marketing, and Customer Success, you will also play a key role in refining product direction, improving customer outcomes, and driving long-term revenue expansion. Your impact will extend beyond sales performance, helping shape company strategy, organizational maturity, and Acceldata's trajectory as a category leader.

Team Leadership & Development:

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of 4 enterprise AEs today, scaling to 8-10 by EOY through direct recruiting from your network and the market.
• Build and enforce a MEDDPICC-driven inspection cadence across the team: deal reviews, pipeline scrubs, forecast calls; ensuring every rep operates with rigor and accountability.
• Coach to Challenger/JOLT principles, running film sessions via Gong, diagnosing stuck deals at the champion vs. economic buyer level, and developing each AE's ability to teach, tailor, and take control.
• Own the full talent lifecycle: recruiting, onboarding, ramping, performance managing, and when necessary, upgrading talent. Your ability to attract and retain top enterprise sellers is your highest-leverage activity.
• Drive rep productivity metrics, including ramp time, quota attainment distribution, pipeline creation per head, and activity-to-outcome ratios.

Revenue Execution & Pipeline Governance:

• Own the North American new-logo ARR number. You are accountable for team attainment against aggressive but achievable targets across deal sizes and product lines.
• Build and maintain pipeline coverage discipline: define and enforce stage-gate criteria aligned to MEDDPICC, set coverage ratio expectations, and ensure the team is building pipeline at 3-4x commit.
• Deliver forecast accuracy: run a forecast methodology that distinguishes Commit, Most Likely, and Upside with precision. Your forecast is your credibility.
• Manage deal strategy at the executive level: engage directly on strategic and complex opportunities, helping AEs navigate multi-threaded enterprise procurement, legal negotiations, and C-suite engagement.
• Monitor and improve win rates, average selling price (ASP), and sales cycle times as leading indicators of execution quality and team health.

Territory & Go-to-Market Strategy:

• Translate Acceldata's product capabilities into differentiated value propositions for enterprise buyers: Chief Data Officers, VPs of Data Engineering, and technical stakeholders who demand substance.
• Leverage Challenger-based rational drowning to build urgency around real business pain in data quality, reliability, and governance; not features and functions.
• Drive competitive intelligence: maintain a current view of the competitive landscape across data observability, data quality, and data management to inform positioning and deal strategy.

Cross-Functional Leadership:

• Partner with Product to feed enterprise customer requirements, roadmap priorities, and competitive gaps into the product development cycle.
• Collaborate with Marketing on account-based programs, ICP refinement, event strategy, and content that fuels enterprise pipeline.
• Ensure clean handoffs to Customer Success, protecting expansion revenue and setting the foundation for long-term account health from day one of the sales cycle.
• Serve as a voice at the leadership table, contributing to company strategy, pricing decisions, and go-to-market evolution beyond your direct team.

Requirements:

Leadership Experience:

• 5+ years as a first-line sales leader (Manager, Director, or VP) managing enterprise AE teams at SLG startups (Series B-D) selling into the Fortune 500.
• Proven track record of building and scaling teams from small (4-6 reps) to mid-size (10+), including direct experience recruiting top enterprise sellers.
• Must have managed teams running MEDDPICC and Challenger/JOLT as operating systems; not just sold with these frameworks individually. You've built inspection cadences, coached reps to the methodology, and held teams accountable.
• Demonstrated ability to manage forecast accuracy and pipeline governance at the team level with a history of calling your number within a tight variance.

Domain & Selling Experience:

• 7+ years of quota-carrying enterprise software sales experience prior to moving into leadership, with a proven track record of exceeding new ARR quota selling into Fortune 500/Global 2000 accounts.
• Deep domain expertise in the data management ecosystem: Data Quality, Governance, Observability, Orchestration, Catalog, Reliability, or adjacent categories.
• Bilingual thinker (Tech Exec): Comfortable having substantive conversations with data engineers and Chief Data Officers alike. You speak both languages fluently.
• Technical acumen spanning: Open Source/Hadoop, enterprise data management, cloud service providers, Containers/K8s, ETL, databases/data warehouses, and the modern data stack.
• Experience with complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles ranging from six to seven figure ACV with 6-12+ month sales cycles.

Operational & Cultural Requirements:

• Builder's tolerance for ambiguity: You have operated in environments where the playbook doesn't exist yet and you wrote it. Entrepreneurial ownership is your default mode.
• Full-stack leadership: You don't just manage, you can step into a deal, run a demo, or prospect alongside your reps when the situation demands it.
• Tech stack fluency: Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Outreach, Gong, Perplexity, Dripify, AI-driven sales tools, and Storylane.
• Act Like an Owner: You do what it takes to win; aligned to the company's best interests.
• Travel: Willingness to travel up to 50% for customer meetings, team onsites, trade shows, and enterprise events.
• Remote discipline: US-based, able to operate effectively in a distributed team environment with high accountability and over-communication.

Key Performance Indicators:

First 90 Days:

• Complete assessment of current team performance, pipeline health, and territory coverage.
• Establish MEDDPICC inspection cadence and forecast operating rhythm.
• Identify hiring priorities and begin recruiting pipeline for open headcount.
• Build relationships with cross-functional partners in Product, Marketing, and CS.

6 Months:

• Team scaled to 6-8 AEs with new hires ramping against defined onboarding milestones.
• Pipeline coverage at 3-4x commit with disciplined stage-gate adherence.
• Forecast accuracy within acceptable variance; credible commit calls.
• Measurable improvement in win rates, ASP, or cycle time vs. baseline.

12 Months:

• Team at 8-10+ AEs, all contributing to ARR.
• Team ARR target met or exceeded.
• Organizational readiness for second-line structure demonstrated through team depth and operating maturity.
• Strategic territory and team plan articulated for Year two scale.