Job description

ABOUT US: Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI. ABOUT THE ROLE We're looking for an Senior Sales Manager, AI Native to build, coach, and scale the team selling into the most ambitious GenAI-native companies in the world. This person will lead a team of AI Native Account Executives, own new business and expansion across a portfolio of GenAI startups, and build the repeatable playbooks that turn early technical traction into production-scale revenue. Fireworks is past $1B ARR and trusted by GenAI-native companies like Cursor, Vercel, and Genspark. The AI Native segment moves faster than any other part of our business — founders evaluate in days, workloads scale in weeks, and the buyer is almost always technical. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can both set strategy and get in the deal. You'll be expected to raise the bar on technical credibility, discovery rigor, usage growth, and forecast accuracy, while creating an environment where AEs learn quickly and grow into future GTM leaders. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Lead, coach, and develop a team of AI Native Account Executives selling into GenAI-native startups. - Own team performance against new logo, consumption growth, pipeline, and forecast accuracy goals. - Build and refine the AI Native sales motion - from first technical conversation through evaluation, benchmarking, POC, and production scale. - Coach AEs to lead credible technical conversations with founders, ML engineers, and infra leads, and to earn trust with both engineers and founders. - Partner with GTM engineering, product, and applied AI to unblock adoption, shape tailored solutions, and accelerate time to value in your team's accounts. - Partner with Sales Development, Marketing, and RevOps on target accounts, territories, qualification standards, inbound routing, and funnel conversion. - Establish clear operating rhythms, including pipeline reviews, deal reviews, call reviews, coaching sessions, and weekly forecast inspection. - Use usage and account health data to identify expansion opportunities, diagnose churn or stalled adoption, and prioritize the highest-impact accounts. - Translate patterns across the segment into actionable product and roadmap feedback. - Hire, onboard, and ramp new AEs as the team scales. - Represent Fireworks in the GenAI ecosystem - demo days, meetups, and online communities - and build the team's presence there. - Create a culture of accountability, curiosity, technical depth, and continuous improvement. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years of experience in sales or business development selling to technical buyers, with experience managing or formally coaching quota-carrying AEs. - Proven ability to win and grow accounts in a technical, infrastructure, AI, or developer-oriented market - especially consumption or usage-based models. - Strong coaching skills, especially around technical discovery, multi-threading, POC and evaluation management, negotiation, and executive communication. - Comfort operating in an early-stage or high-growth environment where playbooks are still being built. - Ability to understand and explain technical topics like open-source inference, API performance, model tuning, or GPU architecture - and to hold your own with a founder or ML lead. - Strong analytical orientation and ability to use pipeline and consumption metrics to diagnose performance and improve team execution. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills. - High standards for talent, process, and operational rigor. - Ability to partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Applied ML, Marketing, RevOps, and Recruiting. - Genuine enthusiasm for working with startup founders and builders on the front lines of the GenAI movement. NICE TO HAVE - Experience selling into engineering leaders, product leaders, founders, or AI/ML teams. - Experience supporting AI-native, developer-tooling, data infrastructure, cloud, or open-source GTM motions. - Prior experience building a sales team or segment from an early stage. - Background in a technical or product role before moving into sales leadership. - - Familiarity with tools such as Salesforce, Gong, Lemlist, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clay, or similar revenue platforms. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - The team consistently lands and grows GenAI-native accounts aligned to Fireworks' priority segments. - AEs are technically credible, run rigorous evaluations and POCs, and shorten time from first conversation to production workload. - Consumption in existing accounts grows predictably, with expansion identified from usage data rather than guesswork. - Forecasts are accurate, pipeline is well-inspected, and the operating rhythm is clear to everyone on the team. - New AEs ramp quickly and understand both the technical context and commercial value of Fireworks. - Feedback from the segment reliably reaches product and engineering and shapes what we build. LOCATION San Mateo, CA / San Francisco, CA WHY FIREWORKS? - Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving. - Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally. - Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results. - Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation. Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.

Requirements

Must-haves

Lead, coach, and develop a team of AI Native Account Executives selling into GenAI-native startups.
Own team performance against new logo, consumption growth, pipeline, and forecast accuracy goals.
Build and refine the AI Native sales motion - from first technical conversation through evaluation, benchmarking, POC, and production scale.
Coach AEs to lead credible technical conversations with founders, ML engineers, and infra leads, and to earn trust with both engineers and founders.
Partner with GTM engineering, product, and applied AI to unblock adoption, shape tailored solutions, and accelerate time to value in your team's accounts.
Partner with Sales Development, Marketing, and RevOps on target accounts, territories, qualification standards, inbound routing, and funnel conversion.
Establish clear operating rhythms, including pipeline reviews, deal reviews, call reviews, coaching sessions, and weekly forecast inspection.
Use usage and account health data to identify expansion opportunities, diagnose churn or stalled adoption, and prioritize the highest-impact accounts.
Translate patterns across the segment into actionable product and roadmap feedback.
Hire, onboard, and ramp new AEs as the team scales.
Represent Fireworks in the GenAI ecosystem - demo days, meetups, and online communities - and build the team's presence there.
Create a culture of accountability, curiosity, technical depth, and continuous improvement.
5+ years of experience in sales or business development selling to technical buyers, with experience managing or formally coaching quota-carrying AEs.
Proven ability to win and grow accounts in a technical, infrastructure, AI, or developer-oriented market - especially consumption or usage-based models.
Strong coaching skills, especially around technical discovery, multi-threading, POC and evaluation management, negotiation, and executive communication.
Comfort operating in an early-stage or high-growth environment where playbooks are still being built.
Ability to understand and explain technical topics like open-source inference, API performance, model tuning, or GPU architecture - and to hold your own with a founder or ML lead.
Strong analytical orientation and ability to use pipeline and consumption metrics to diagnose performance and improve team execution.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice-to-haves

Experience selling into engineering leaders, product leaders, founders, or AI/ML teams.
Experience supporting AI-native, developer-tooling, data infrastructure, cloud, or open-source GTM motions.
Prior experience building a sales team or segment from an early stage.
Background in a technical or product role before moving into sales leadership.
Familiarity with tools such as Salesforce, Gong, Lemlist, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clay, or similar revenue platforms.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

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