Strategic Account Executive

As a Strategic Account Executive at FriendliAI, you will be instrumental in driving our market expansion by securing high-value enterprise accounts and building strategic relationships with leading AI-forward companies. You'll focus on helping enterprises leverage FriendliAI's inference serving platform to achieve transformative cost savings and performance improvements across their AI deployments. Environments Highly competitive base salary plus uncapped commission structure tied to enterprise deal valueEquity in a rapidly growing AI infrastructure companyComprehensive benefits packageCollaborative environment with exposure to cutting-edge AI technologies Key Responsibilities Own the end-to-end sales process with enterprises, from generating pipeline to closing high-value, strategic enterprise deals focused on AI inference and serving solutionsIdentify and capitalize on growth opportunities within existing accounts, becoming a trusted advisor for AI infrastructure optimizationBuild and maintain strategic relationships with CTOs, engineering leaders, ML/AI leaders, and other technical decision-makers at target enterprises. Manage technical POCs that demonstrate FriendliAI's superior performance and cost advantages, collaborating with internal engineering teams and enterprise clientsConsistently generate and manage a robust pipeline by identifying enterprises with significant inference workloads and positioning FriendliAI's solutions strategicallyLead tech community engagements, representing FriendliAI at premier AI/ML conferences, meetups, and industry events (AI Engineer World's Fair, AWS re:Invent, etc.)Cultivate strategic relationships with AI engineers, ML platform leaders, and technical decision-makers at target enterprises through community involvementOrganize technical events; workshops, technical demos, and meetups showcasing FriendliAICollaborate on technical content, case studies, and speaking opportunities that establish FriendliAI's market leadershipBring the voice of enterprise customers into product discussions, ensuring FriendliAI's roadmap aligns with market needs and competitive positioningWork closely with engineering teams to understand and articulate complex technical differentiators around inference optimizationAnalyze the competitive landscape and provide insights on enterprise AI infrastructure trends and requirements Qualifications 5+ years of B2B enterprise sales experienceProven track record of closing $300K+ ARR deals and consistently exceeding revenue targetsExperience selling AI inference, GPU compute, cloud infrastructure, bare-metal infrastructure, or other technical AI infrastructure solutionsStrong technical background in AI/ML infrastructure, cloud platforms, compute, or developer toolsDeep understanding of LLM deployment, inference serving, and AI/ML workflowsActive participation in AI/ML tech communities with demonstrated networking abilitiesExperience managing technical POCs and multi-stakeholder enterprise sales cyclesExcellent communication skills for engaging both C-level executives and technical teams Preferred Experience AI inference, AI infrastructure, MLOps, cloud compute, bare-metal infrastructure, or developer tools company backgroundExisting network within enterprise AI/ML, engineering, or infrastructure teamsTechnical degree or equivalent practical experience in AI/ML spaceTrack record of organizing or speaking at tech meetups and industry conferences About Us FriendliAI, a San Mateo, CA-based startup, is building the next-generation AI inference platform that accelerates the deployment of large language and multimodal models with unmatched performance and efficiency. Our infrastructure supports high-throughput, low-latency AI workloads for organizations worldwide. We are also integrated with the Hugging Face platform, allowing instant access to over 600,000 open-source models. We are on a mission to deliver the world's best platform for AI inference