Account Executive, AI

About the role

Akai was built internally to solve a problem we had ourselves. Running payroll, compliance, and finance operations across 170+ countries means living inside hundreds of government portals, banking interfaces, and legacy systems that will never expose an API. Our own teams were drowning in it. So we built Akai to put agents on those workflows and give the time back. It worked internally and the interest from customers and prospects who wanted the same thing started immediately. Today Akai is going to market with a product and roadmap that puts us at the front of the operational AI agent category.

This is a founding GTM role. You’ll be the first dedicated Account Executive on the team — hunting net new logos, expanding accounts, and helping shape how Akai goes to market. We practice what we preach: we dogfood our own product, run our own GTM motion through Akai, and expect you to do the same.

Responsibilities

• Own a greenfield target account list across Akai’s ICPs, ranging from scale-ups to multinational enterprises
• Hunt. Build pipeline through outbound prospecting, creative multi-channel outreach, and relentless follow-up. Inbound demand is strong but you don’t wait for it
• Run the full sales cycle end-to-end: discovery, technical demo, business case, procurement, and close — selling into Operations, AI, and Finance teams
• Translate a technical, agent-based product into clear, simple business outcomes for non-technical buyers
• Expand existing accounts by identifying new workflows, teams, and use cases where Akai can automate
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering and FDE to shape the offering based on what you hear in the market — your feedback loop is short and direct
• Use Akai itself, plus the cutting-edge AI tooling we ship across the company, to automate and compound your own workflow
• Keep CRM and pipeline data clean and current so the team learns from every motion

Requirements

• 4–6 years of full sales cycle experience in SaaS or a technology company, with meaningful exposure to AI, generative AI, LLM-based products, agent platforms, or API products
• Top percentile attainment — a documented track record of exceeding quota in a fast-paced, high-velocity environment. We’re hiring killers, not coasters
• Proven success developing greenfield territories and landing net new logos — you’ve done zero-to-one before and you want to do it again
• Experience selling technical solutions to Operations, AI, Finance, Product, Engineering, or Innovation teams
• Hunter mentality. Outbound is muscle memory. You don’t take no for an answer and you don’t wait to be handed pipeline
• Genuine, demonstrable passion for AI in the world of work — you follow the frontier models, you have opinions on agents, you’ve already rebuilt parts of your own workflow with AI before anyone asked you to
• Sharp technical aptitude — you pick up new products fast and can explain complex systems in simple language
• Detail-oriented and creative — you think outside the box on prospecting, deal strategy, and account expansion
• Excellent written and verbal communication; you can hold the room with a CFO and a Head of AI in the same call
• A hunger to build from the ground up inside groundbreaking technology — you want founding-team energy, not a seat in a machine that already runs

Benefits

Full-time employees in the United States receive a variety of benefits while employed at Deel.

• Health Insurance effective from Day 1 (Medical, Dental, & Vision)
• 401k Retirement Plan
• Disability Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Flexible Savings Account (FSA)
• Flexible time off (PTO)
• 12 paid holidays per year
• Parental leave: 16 weeks for the birthing parent and 8 weeks for the non-birthing parent