Enterprise Account Executive — US East

Vespa.ai is expanding its enterprise sales team on the US East Coast. We're looking for a results-driven Enterprise Account Executive to develop and close new business, grow existing customer relationships, and help organizations already using open-source Vespa evaluate Vespa Cloud.

You'll own the full sales cycle, including building your own pipeline, and work closely with technical and business stakeholders throughout the customer relationship. You should be able to position a technical platform in today's AI market, connecting its capabilities to specific customer use cases and business value. If you have a proven track record of selling technically complex platforms to engineering, data or AI teams and consistently exceeding quota, we'd like to hear from you. The role initially reports to the COO.

About Vespa.ai

Vespa.ai is a Norwegian company building Vespa, the Apache 2.0-licensed open-source platform for search, recommendations and AI retrieval at scale.

Developed at Yahoo, Vespa has powered demanding production applications for more than a decade. It combines vector, lexical and structured search with programmable ranking and machine learning inference in a single platform, helping applications find and rank relevant information from continuously changing data. Vespa powers production applications at companies including Spotify, Yahoo, Wix, DuckDuckGo and Elicit.

We operate Vespa Cloud for teams that want a managed service, and offer commercial software for customers running Vespa on their own infrastructure — so customers choose how and where they run, rather than being locked into one deployment model. Vespa.ai is well funded and growing.

What you'll do

• Own and develop an assigned US East territory. Build an account strategy based on customer fit and market opportunity.
• Find and win new customers. Identify relevant accounts and use cases, prospect, qualify and close new business. Build your own qualified pipeline through targeted outreach, relationships and industry engagement.
• Own the full sales cycle. Lead discovery, business-case development, technical evaluations, negotiation and close. Work closely with Solutions Engineering while retaining ownership of qualification, next steps and the commercial outcome.
• Develop inbound and open-source opportunities. Help organizations that discover Vespa through open source evaluate and adopt Vespa Cloud or our commercial self-managed offering.
• Grow customer relationships. Own the commercial relationship from first sale through expansion and renewal, working with technical buyers, executive sponsors and procurement.
• Stay close to the AI market. Recognize relevant customer needs and emerging use cases, and use those insights to sharpen your outreach and positioning.
• Run your territory. Maintain an accurate pipeline and reliable forecast, and prioritize opportunities based on customer fit and commercial potential.

What we're looking for

• Proven ability to generate and close your own business. You can give concrete examples of customers you identified and approached yourself, and opportunities you developed from first contact to a signed agreement.
• Experience selling technical platforms to technical buyers. You've sold products such as search, databases, data infrastructure, developer tools or cloud services to engineering, data or AI teams, including working through technical evaluations and proofs of concept.
• Practical understanding of AI applications. You understand where search, retrieval and data infrastructure fit in applications such as RAG and AI agents. You can ask informed discovery questions and connect technical capabilities to specific customer needs. You do not need to code, but you must be technically curious.
• A strong sales track record. You have consistently met or exceeded enterprise B2B software sales quotas and can demonstrate strong discovery, negotiation, stakeholder-management and closing skills.
• Independence and commercial judgment. You're comfortable in a growing company where processes are still evolving. You create opportunities rather than relying on inbound leads, and recognize potential in both AI-native companies and established enterprises.
• Based in the New York area, authorized to work in the United States, and willing to travel for customer and team meetings.

Why join Vespa.ai

• Proven technology in a growing AI market. Sell a platform with established production deployments and public customer references, with opportunities across search, recommendations and AI retrieval. You can show customers working applications, not just a roadmap.
• Build our business on the East Coast. Take ownership of developing the territory, winning customers and growing those relationships. You'll have Solutions Engineering and the rest of the sales team behind you, and open-source adoption gives you a foundation to build on.
• Work directly with the people building the product. Partner with Solutions Engineering on evaluations and POCs, with direct access to engineering and product expertise. Bring customer insights into decisions about how Vespa develops.
• Offer customers deployment choice. Sell managed Vespa Cloud or commercial self-managed software, matching the offering to the customer's operational, security and data-residency needs.

Compensation and benefits

Annual base salary $160,000–200,000 depending on experience, plus uncapped commission on a 50/50 base/variable plan.

Benefits include company-sponsored health insurance, paid time off, and stock options.

How to apply

Apply with your resume or LinkedIn profile. A brief example of an opportunity you personally originated and closed is more useful than a generic cover letter. Please do not include confidential customer information.

Vespa.ai is an equal-opportunity employer.