Founding Account Executive

Job Description

Founding Account Executive

New York, NY (hybrid, 3 days at 4 World Trade Center) |

About ZeroDrift

ZeroDrift is the Enforcement Runtime for AI. Every regulation, pre-loaded. Your policies, trained on top. Enforced on everything AI says, before it ships.

AI now speaks for entire organizations, and every existing tool catches problems after send, once the risk is already out the door. ZeroDrift sits inline and reads every AI-generated and AI-assisted message against regulations, company policies, and security controls in real time.

Runtime enforcement did not exist as a category. We created it, and we are starting with compliance on AI communications at the most regulated companies in the world.

ZeroDrift is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z speedrun), PitchDrive Ventures, Reign Ventures, and other leading investors, and built by engineering and AI leaders from Microsoft, Google, and Goldman Sachs, led by a repeat AI founder.

The role

You are our first dedicated closer, focused on winning enterprise deals and expanding large accounts. This is a 0 to 1 role. You sell side by side with the Founder & CEO, who drives these deals with you, and with a GTM Engineer who builds the tooling behind the motion. The product is live and in production, our first proposals are out, and there are enterprise doors open that need closing. Your job is to close them, turn early wins into a repeatable process, then scale it.

Our buyers are CISOs, Heads of AI, CTOs, and engineering leaders, with compliance and risk leaders as champions and the C-suite signing. We sell to AI-native scale-ups, where a CTO or Head of AI can sign in weeks, and to regulated enterprises, starting in financial services and expanding into healthcare, insurance, and every sector where AI is about to speak for the business. Enterprise deals are long, multi-threaded cycles with security review, procurement, legal, and a hands-on technical evaluation at the center. Scale-up deals move fast and reward a seller who qualifies hard and closes. You run both end to end.

There is no sales engineer to hand off to by design. ZeroDrift is an API-first runtime that sits in front of any LLM and extends into the tools people already use, and buyers want to see it enforce their policies, in their stack, live. You run the demo yourself, and demos are where you win deals. You operate the API yourself and tailor demos to meet the needs of the customer when a prospect says "show me how this handles our rules." You work in Claude or similar tools every day.

What you will own

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• The full cycle on enterprise deals, from first conversation to signature
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• Pipeline generation across AI-native scale-ups and financial services, then healthcare and insurance, alongside the CEO, the GTM Engineer, and our outbound team
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• Live technical demos, tailored to a prospect's real policies and channels, and proofs of concept run with engineering
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• The buying committee: security, AI, engineering, compliance, risk, procurement, and the C-suite
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• Pricing, business cases, proposals, redlines, and negotiation
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• A disciplined process: clean CRM, accurate forecasts, a scheduled next step on every deal, and every proposal walked through with the buyer live
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• The feedback loop into product and marketing: what buyers ask for, where deals stall, and what wins
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What you bring

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• 6+ years in B2B sales closing enterprise deals of $100K+ ACV, ideally technical products (infrastructure, APIs, security, developer tools, or AI) sold to technical buyers
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• A history of hitting quota on both kinds of deals: long enterprise cycles through security reviews, procurement, legal, and technical evaluations, and fast deals with startup buyers who sign in weeks
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• Real technical fluency: you demo without an SE, operate an API from a terminal or Postman, and can explain the runtime to a CTO and the policy mapping to a Chief Compliance Officer in the same meeting
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• AI tools in your daily workflow: Claude or similar every day for account research, call prep, and follow-up
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• Extreme organization: every stakeholder mapped, every forecast accurate, nothing dropped
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• Rigorous qualification: you confirm the pain, the timeline, the buying process, and the champion early, and you walk away from deals that don't have them
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• Experience selling into financial services or another heavily regulated industry
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• 0 to 1 or early-stage experience, or you were the person on a bigger team who figured things out first. You want a sales process that is still being written and will change, because you get to write it
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• Direct, candid, and fast. You own the outcome and tell the truth about your pipeline
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Bonus points

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• Sold AI infrastructure, security, or developer-facing products to CISOs, Heads of AI, CTOs, or engineering leaders
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• Experience in healthcare, insurance, or other regulated sectors beyond financial services
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• A technical background in computer science, engineering, data, or a prior sales engineering role
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• First or early sales hire at a venture-backed startup
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• You have built a demo or proof of concept yourself in Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex
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How we work

We are built for speed of execution and end-to-end ownership. Think of ZeroDrift as a multi-year, high-risk, high-reward sprint. This is a hybrid role: three days a week at 4 World Trade Center in New York City, and the rest remote.

What the first year looks like

In your first 30 days you run discovery and demos on your own. By day 90 you own a book of active opportunities, your forecast is one the CEO can plan around, and your first deals are closed. By the end of year one you have hit your number, and the process you built is the one the next sellers learn.

Compensation and benefits

Base salary $150,000 to $180,000. On-target earnings $300,000 to $380,000, uncapped. Meaningful early-stage equity. Top-tier medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus a 401(k). We decide within two weeks of your first conversation.

ZeroDrift is an equal opportunity employer. You must be authorized to work in the United States.