Key Account Executive

Role Overview

The Key Account Executive at Smartcat is a senior, revenue-owning role responsible for building multi-million ARR relationships across our highest-potential enterprise customers — and selectively, new enterprise logos with long-term expansion potential.

This is not a passive account management role.
It is a hunter–expander role that requires urgency, executive presence, commercial rigor, AI business fluency, and strong character.

You will:

• Expand existing enterprise customers into multi-department, multi-workflow, global relationships
• Own a select set of high-quality new logos and hunt them aggressively
• Lead executive-level conversations around AI value, governance, ROI, and outcomes
  
• Operate as a strategic revenue owner in close partnership with Field Delivery Engineers (FDE), Customer AI Engineers, Product, Marketing, and RevOps
  
  

This role directly drives NRR, expansion ARR, and Smartcat’s path to $100M+ ARR.

Core Responsibilities

1. Expansion Revenue Ownership & Selective New Logo Hunting

• Own Expansion ARR and NRR across a defined portfolio of enterprise accounts
• Proactively identify and pursue:
• Upsell and cross-sell opportunities
• Package expansion and agent capability expansion
• New workflows, departments, business units, and geographies
• Own a select number of new enterprise logos where Smartcat sees long-term, durable ARR potential
• Build and execute a clear plan and path to multi-million ARR per account cluster
• Treat accounts as businesses, not books of business

This role requires urgency. We do not wait years for deals to happen.

2. True Enterprise Hunter Mentality

You must be comfortable:

• Getting out of coaches and low-level users
  
• Navigating complex enterprise organizations to reach real decision-makers
• Building multi-threaded relationships across:
• Business leaders
• Technical stakeholders
• Finance and procurement
• VP, SVP, and C-level executives
• Creating momentum where none exists
  
  

This is not a caretaker role.
It is a hunter role inside enterprise whitespace.

3. Executive-Level Commercial & Financial Acumen

You are expected to:

• Read and understand:
• Balance sheets
• Budget ownership and buying power
• Enterprise buying centers
• Build custom commercial proposals tied to:
• Business impact
• ROI and value realization
• Productivity, cost reduction, and risk mitigation
• Lead executive negotiations and stakeholder alignment
• Confidently run high-stakes conversations with senior executives across global organizations

You sell outcomes and impact, not SKUs.

4. Procurement & Enterprise Deal Mastery

You must be highly comfortable:

• Leading deals through:
• Procurement
• Legal
• Security
• AI, data, and governance reviews
• Navigating centralized and regional buying committees
• Managing pricing, discounting, and contract negotiations
• Holding the line on value rather than defaulting to discounting
• Controlling the deal process — not being controlled by it

5. Multi-Method Enterprise Selling Fluency

You are expected to be fluent across modern enterprise sales approaches, including:

• Challenger
• Value-based selling
• MEDDPICC-driven qualification
• Consultative and executive narrative selling

No single framework is followed dogmatically.
You must apply the right approach for the buyer, the moment, and the deal.

6. AI, Governance & Business Outcomes Fluency

This is a hard requirement.

You must be comfortable leading executive conversations about:

• The business value of AI
  
• AI impact on:
• Productivity
• Speed-to-market
• Cost efficiency
• Risk mitigation
• AI governance, trust, and responsible use
• Human-in-the-loop models and quality assurance
• Translating Smartcat’s agentic platform and Multi-Agent Systems into measurable ROI
  

You are not required to be technical-first, but you must be business-first and outcomes-driven.

7. Strategic + Urgent Execution Balance

We expect someone who:

• Is strategic and fast-moving
• Avoids analysis paralysis
• Maintains quarter-by-quarter execution discipline
• Does not hide behind long-term strategy to avoid closing deals

If you are “too strategic to close,” you will not succeed here.

8. Cross-Functional Leadership & Delivery Partnership

You will work closely with:

• Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE)
• Customer AI Engineers
• Product and Solutions teams
• Marketing and Revenue Operations

You must be comfortable:

• Collaborating deeply on scoped expansions
• Ensuring complexity is sold correctly
• Co-owning outcomes through delivery
• Escalating early and intelligently

There is no throwing work over the fence.

9. Character, Humility & Operating Standards (Non-Negotiable)

This role requires elite performance with elite character.

We explicitly hire for the principles of an Ideal Team Player, with special emphasis on humility as a force multiplier.

Humility Is a Requirement

At Smartcat, humility is not weakness.
Humility is power under control.

We expect people who are:

• Confident without ego
• Secure enough to invite challenge
• Willing to be wrong, learn fast, and adapt
• Quick to share credit and slow to assign blame
• Focused on outcomes over personal recognition

High-ego, lone-wolf behavior will not succeed here — regardless of past revenue.

Hungry, Smart, and Humble — In Balance

• Hungry: Relentless about results, ownership, and momentum
• Smart: High emotional intelligence and organizational judgment
• Humble: Coachable, collaborative, and grounded

Being hungry without humility creates chaos.
Being smart without humility creates friction.
This role requires all three.

10. Comfort Delivering Uncomfortable Truth

This role requires adult, high-integrity communication.

You must be comfortable:

👉 Delivering uncomfortable truth internally and externally

That includes:

• Challenging customers when value is at risk
• Calling deal risk early
• Disqualifying weak opportunities
• Pushing back on misaligned scope or expectations
• Speaking up with data and conviction

We value truth over harmony and accuracy over optimism.

11. Forecast Rigor & Revenue Ownership

Forecasting is not reporting — it is ownership.

In this role:

• You own your forecast
• You call it straight
• You surface risk early
• You do not sandbag
• You do not hero-forecast

We operate as one team:

• You bring rigor, judgment, and clarity
• Leadership brings coaching, support, and execution alignment
• Together, we drive outcomes

Forecast integrity is table stakes.

Proof, References & Hiring Bar

This is a Tier-1, board-level role.

• Quotas and performance history will be validated
• References are required and will be checked
• We evaluate patterns over time, not one-off wins
• We look for sustained performance, learning from losses, and ownership across roles

This is not a short-term hire. It is a long-term investment.

Leadership & The Business Bet

Smartcat is making a real business bet on this role.

In return, we provide:

• Direct access to leadership
• Hands-on coaching from a CRO who previously scaled a company to $150M+ ARR and a successful exit
  
• Deep cross-functional support across Product, FDE, CX, Marketing, and RevOps
• Clear executive sponsorship and alignment

Leadership leads from the front. Coaching is real.

Who This Role Is Not For

• Passive account managers
• SKU or price-book sellers
• Reps uncomfortable with executives or procurement
• Ego-driven lone wolves
• “Wait-and-see” strategists
• Anyone seeking comfort over accountability