Founding Sales Engineer

Founding Sales Location: Permanently remote, with optional office access in Columbus, Ohio. Current compensation: 7.5% equity plus commission. No base salary today. I need to say the difficult part first I wish I could put a salary on this role. Semfora does not have the cash for one today, and I am sorry. The company is critically cash-constrained. I need commercial help before I can responsibly create the salaried role that would normally come first. That asks someone else to take a real financial risk alongside me. I will not dress it up as a normal job offer or pretend that startup equity is guaranteed compensation. For the right person, I am offering 7.5% of the company, plus a high commission on business closed before Semfora can put the role on payroll. Why Semfora exists AI can produce code faster than an engineering organization can understand what is changing. The people who approve the merge still own the production result. They answer the security review, explain the exception, investigate the failure, and eventually inherit code that nobody clearly remembers approving. Semfora gives those teams a code-evidence record. It connects to GitHub and builds a deterministic map of repository structure and history across 30 programming languages. That map supports engineering dashboards, cited investigation, work items, pull-request review, merge gates, and waiver records that preserve what was reviewed, who owned the decision, what exception was accepted, and what happened afterward. The product is live. Billing is live. The engine, application, dashboards, PR gate, and investigation workflows exist today. The commercial operation does not. I have built far more product than sales process. I am looking for the person who can help correct that. The compensation The founding sales lead will receive: 7.5% equity, calculated on a fully diluted, pre-financing basis Four-year vesting, monthly, with a three-month cliff 25% of new customer cash collected from business they materially source and close before the role moves onto payroll A salary and conventional commission structure when Semfora closes enough financing or recurring revenue to responsibly support payroll The equity does not disappear when funding arrives. It will not be exchanged for salary, reduced because the company can finally pay cash, or replaced with a smaller employee grant. It will continue vesting under the original agreement. It will be subject to the same ordinary dilution from future financing that applies to other shareholders. Commission terms will change once the role moves onto payroll. That change will apply prospectively. Commission already earned under the original agreement will remain payable. A small angel check may extend the company's runway without being enough to create responsible payroll. The transition happens when Semfora has enough committed capital or recurring revenue to support the salary, taxes, benefits, operating costs, and continued runway. All equity, vesting, commission attribution, payment timing, termination treatment, and conversion-to-payroll terms will be written down before work begins and reviewed by counsel. Who this can work for This cannot work for everyone. You need enough personal runway to take the risk without putting yourself or your family in a dangerous position. I do not want someone accepting this because they feel cornered, because they misunderstand the equity, or because they assume funding is imminent. There is no promised financing date. There is no guaranteed value attached to the equity. There is a functioning product, a large technical head start, a founder who knows the code, and a commercial operation that still needs to be built. The role You will work directly with me to find out how Semfora becomes a company people consistently buy from. You will own account research, outreach, discovery, demonstrations, proposals, procurement progress, and closing. You will document what buyers care about, where the message fails, which objections repeat, who owns the budget, and why an opportunity advances or dies. There is no sales development team, mature CRM process, established inbound engine, polished enablement library, or proven playbook waiting for you. You will help build those things. The initial buyers are engineering leaders, platform teams, SRE leaders, security stakeholders, and other people responsible for governing software delivery as AI increases the amount and speed of change. What you will do Build and prioritize the initial account list Find and contact the people who own software-delivery decisions Run discovery around recent reviews, incidents, exceptions, and production changes Lead technical demonstrations with support from the founder Translate repository evidence into a decision an engineering leader cares about Advance paid pilots and annual contractsNavigate security review and procurement Maintain exact pipeline notes, stage definitions, objections, and loss reasons Build the first repeatable Semfora sales playbook Tell me plainly when the product, message, market, or offer is failing You will not be expected to pretend every conversation is an opportunity. A clean no is useful. A vague maybe sitting in a CRM for six months is not. What I am looking for You have personally built pipeline and closed early B2B software business. Experience selling developer tools, observability, security, code quality, platform engineering, software infrastructure, or another technical product would help. Experience working with engineering executives and technical buyers matters more than a particular title. You should be comfortable doing the work yourself: Researching accounts Writing direct outreach Running discovery Demonstrating a technical product Asking difficult qualification questions Reaching the economic buyer Closing paid work Recording why deals were won or lost I care about evidence that you have done this before. I care less about whether you managed a large sales team after somebody else had already built the system. A bachelor's degree is not required. Remote permanently This role is remote and will remain remote. Semfora has office space available in the Columbus, Ohio area. You can use it occasionally, regularly, or never. There is no relocation requirement, mandatory office schedule, or future return-to-office clause hidden behind the word 'remote.' #J-18808-Ljbffr Semfora