Founding Account Executive

About this role

You will work directly with the founders on active customer opportunities: running discovery, qualifying accounts, moving deals forward, and documenting what works. This is a hands-on role for someone who can sell into complex, regulated environments and help turn early customer demand into a more disciplined sales process. You will own the commercial side of early opportunities, with the opportunity to grow into broader ownership as the sales process becomes more repeatable.

What you'll own

• Qualified pipeline across Sphere's initial markets: aerospace, defense, and adjacent advanced R&D accounts, with responsibility for evaluating which adjacent federal, national lab, or regulated segments are worth pursuing and when
• Opportunity qualification and stakeholder mapping: whether there is a real problem, a strong champion, a plausible buyer, a clear decision process, and a path to production, and who the key decision-makers and blockers are
• Pilot and evaluation scoping: success criteria and commercial next steps agreed before work begins, not after
• The commercial path from first conversation through evaluation, procurement, signed agreement, and production transition, coordinating with founders and engineering on technical and deployment questions along the way
• Documentation of what repeats across wins, losses, and stalled opportunities, including customer and market feedback for founders, product, and engineering

What you'll do

• Run discovery to understand the customer's problem, mission context, stakeholders, budget path, procurement path, deployment constraints, and decision process
• Shape early-stage opportunities by clarifying technical requirements, acquisition pathways, timing, and the evidence required for a production decision
• Advance opportunities through evaluation, security and compliance review, procurement, and signed agreement while coordinating technical questions with founders and engineering
• Keep pipeline, account notes, stakeholder maps, next steps, and risks current across all active opportunities
• Support proposals, pilot programs, white papers, teaming conversations, and customer responses where they help advance qualified opportunities
• Build relationships with technical champions, program offices, engineering and R&D leaders, primes, systems integrators, and strategic partners in Sphere's target markets
• Evaluate adjacent markets and make clear recommendations on whether to enter, wait, or deprioritize

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in enterprise software, technical product sales, strategic accounts, or business development, ideally selling into aerospace, defense, advanced R&D, regulated enterprise, or adjacent technical markets
• Experience navigating complex, multi-stakeholder buying cycles involving technical evaluators, security and compliance stakeholders, procurement and legal teams, and multiple decision-making layers
• Track record building pipeline and advancing strategic opportunities without relying on a mature sales machine
• Strong discovery instincts and comfort discussing budget, urgency, decision process, procurement path, and production criteria early
• Ability to work credibly with scientists, engineers, security teams, and technical buyers, translate Sphere's value to both technical and executive audiences, and know when to bring in founders or engineering rather than pushing past your lane
• Strong written and verbal communication, operational discipline, and ability to translate customer feedback into useful input for founders, product, and engineering

Strong pluses

• Aerospace and defense enterprise sales experience, especially with engineering, R&D, security, procurement, legal, and executive stakeholders
• Experience selling AI, data, search, document intelligence, cybersecurity, engineering software, scientific software, simulation tools, technical content, or other complex technical platforms
• Understanding of federal government sales or defense procurement, including familiarity with how government contracts and acquisition paths work
• Experience selling into or supporting customers in environments with strict security, compliance, or access control requirements
• Existing network across aerospace, defense, federal agencies, national laboratories, defense primes, systems integrators, or advanced R&D organizations
• Experience supporting proposals, pilot programs, teaming conversations, or partner-led opportunities
• Prior experience at an early-stage company where you helped build commercial process rather than only executing someone else's

Your first 90 days

• Build a clear view of every active opportunity, including stakeholders, next steps, risks, and decision path
• Identify which active opportunities are real, which are underqualified, and which should be deprioritized
• Have at least one active evaluation or pilot with agreed success criteria and a documented commercial next step in place
• Establish the first version of a discovery and qualification process: the questions asked in every early conversation and the signals that determine whether an opportunity is worth pursuing
• Produce an initial read on which adjacent markets or segments are worth evaluating next

Compensation

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible paid time off
• Company-provided equipment

As an early-stage company, we're committed to building a benefits package that grows with us.