Account Executive, Digital Natives
Blacksmith· startup· Computer Software· Aug 14, 2026 · 3mo agoPosted 74 days ago
SF / NYC
In office
Full-time
Mid
$130K–$163K est.
3+ years exp
Before you apply
Ghost Signal:
Open 74 days.
Job description
ABOUT BLACKSMITH
- We started by building infrastructure to run CI workloads really fast. Our first product helps companies run GitHub Actions substantially faster and cheaper by owning and operating our own global fleet of bare-metal machines rather than renting generic cloud VMs.
- Today, we orchestrate tens of millions of Firecracker VMs each week, running CI for 7,000+ companies and tens of millions in ARR. We’ve grown 10x so far in 2026.
- We operate thousands of bare-metal machines across multiple regions, regularly schedule 100k+ vCPUs concurrently, and run a petabyte-scale Ceph cluster that we manage ourselves.
- We’ve raised $58.5M from Seed to Series B, led by Google Ventures (GV) & Peak XV Partners, and we’re intentionally building a small, but exceptional team.
- Blacksmith was founded by a team with deep systems and scaling experience, including building search/ads infrastructure at Faire, and operating large distributed systems at Cockroach Labs. Our GTM is led by Jon Boyer, formerly Head of Sales at Zapier.
- We're now extending the same CI infrastructure into a broader platform: running agent sandboxes at scale and building our own background coding agent on top of it.
ABOUT THE ROLE
As an Account Executive, Digital Native, you'll own new business across a territory of high-growth, engineering-driven companies.
This is a hunter role. You'll be responsible for building pipeline, breaking into high-potential accounts, running technical sales cycles, and closing net-new customers.
Our buyers are engineers, platform teams, engineering leaders, founders, and CTOs. You'll need to be comfortable selling a deeply technical product, understanding how customers build and ship software, and connecting infrastructure performance to meaningful business outcomes.
You'll work closely with our Solutions Engineers, founders, product, and engineering teams. As an early member of the GTM organization, you'll also help shape how we sell, where we focus, and how we scale the Digital Native motion.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
BUILD AND CLOSE YOUR TERRITORY
- Own a territory of high-growth, engineering-driven companies from prospecting through close.
- Identify the accounts where Blacksmith can have the greatest impact and develop a point of view on how to win them.
- Build relationships across engineering, platform, DevOps, finance, and executive stakeholders.
- Run a disciplined sales process from initial conversation through evaluation, commercial negotiation, and close.
GENERATE YOUR OWN PIPELINE
- Create pipeline through targeted outbound, creative prospecting, events, referrals, and your own network.
- Use product signals, engineering growth, cloud usage, funding, hiring, and other signals to prioritize the right accounts.
- Find creative ways into companies rather than relying on high-volume outbound.
- Partner with marketing and growth while maintaining ownership of your territory.
SELL A DEEPLY TECHNICAL PRODUCT
- Partner with Solutions Engineers to run technical discovery, evaluations, and proof-of-concepts.
- Develop a strong understanding of CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, developer workflows, and the economics of running compute at scale.
- Understand a customer's existing architecture and build a clear case for why Blacksmith should become part of their infrastructure.
- Translate improvements in speed, reliability, developer productivity, and infrastructure cost into a compelling business case.
RUN GREAT DEALS
- Multithread from individual engineers and platform teams to engineering leadership, founders, and CTOs.
- Build champions and understand the technical, economic, and organizational drivers behind a purchase.
- Navigate security, procurement, legal, and commercial negotiations.
- Maintain strong pipeline hygiene and forecast accurately.
HELP BUILD THE GTM MOTION
- Bring customer and market feedback directly to product and engineering.
- Help refine our messaging, qualification criteria, sales process, and playbooks.
- Identify patterns in what's working and turn them into repeatable motions for the rest of the team.
- Operate like an owner. We're still early, and you'll have meaningful influence over how we build the sales organization.
YOU'LL BE A GREAT FIT IF YOU
- Have 3+ years of quota-carrying AE experience, ideally selling infrastructure, developer tools, cloud services, observability, security, or technical SaaS.
- Have a track record of consistently generating your own pipeline and winning net-new logos.
- Are comfortable selling to engineers and technical executives and can build credibility with highly technical buyers.
- Are curious enough to learn how the underlying technology actually works.
- Know how to run a structured sales process while moving quickly when the customer is ready to move.
- Can navigate both bottom-up adoption and top-down enterprise buying motions.
- Have experience multithreading, building champions, and connecting technical value to business outcomes.
- Communicate clearly and can make complicated infrastructure concepts easy to understand.
- Have high standards for preparation, follow-through, and pipeline discipline.
- Want to build. You'd rather help create the playbook than inherit one.
BONUS POINTS
- Experience selling into Digital Native, startup, or developer-first companies.
- Experience selling CI/CD, developer infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, observability, databases, security, or adjacent products.
- Familiarity with GitHub Actions, CI pipelines, cloud economics, or developer productivity.
- Experience working in a PLG or product-led sales environment.
- You've worked at an early-stage or hypergrowth company and understand the pace and ambiguity that comes with it.
- You've built territories, outbound motions, or sales processes from scratch.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
- Competitive base salary and uncapped commission
- Meaningful equity
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 401(k) match
- Unlimited PTO
- Early-exercise stock options
- 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave in the U.S.
- Annual company offsite
Application prep
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Keywords to mirror
ci/cdrest
- Platform
- ashby
- Effort
- quick
Benefits
Benefits detected in the listing.
Dental
Vision
401(K)
Pto
Parental Leave