Founding Account Executive – Simulation AI Agent

Posted:
8/9/2026, 3:16:09 AM

Location(s):
California, United States ⋅ San Francisco, California, United States

Experience Level(s):
Expert or higher ⋅ Senior

Field(s):
Sales & Account Management

Workplace Type:
On-site

About the Role

We're hiring a Founding Account Executive to own and build a repeatable new-logo sales motion for a category-defining AI simulation agent product. You'll join a small, founder-led team at the ground floor, run full-cycle enterprise sales into large engineering organizations, and turn early wins into the playbook that future sellers will inherit. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role where you'll directly shape go-to-market strategy and feed product feedback loops.

What You'll Do

  • Own the full sales cycle — from outbound prospecting through close — for net-new enterprise accounts.

  • Convert warm, founder-sourced opportunities and inbound interest into closed deals while independently building new pipeline.

  • Demo the simulation AI agent solo and design technical evaluations that validate value within customer models and workflows.

  • Navigate complex buying committees, aligning CAE/simulation champions with VP/Director-level economic buyers.

  • Run targeted account plans against engineering teams that currently use tools such as ANSYS, SIMULIA, Altair, or Simcenter.

  • Develop qualification criteria, discovery frameworks, evaluation templates, and objection-handling guides that form the foundation of the company's sales playbook.

  • Feed learnings back to the product team to improve the agent and evolve future sales motions.

  • Build repeatable processes and documentation that future sales hires will execute against.

What We're Looking For

Must-haves (dealbreakers):

  • 6+ years of full-cycle, outbound-driven hunting in complex, technical B2B deals targeting engineering or manufacturing organizations — with a verifiable track record of sourcing and closing net-new logos against quota.

  • Ability to run unaided software demos and real technical evaluations with engineering teams — no reliance on a Sales Engineer in the room.

  • Fluency with AI agents and LLMs; able to articulate concrete engineering value and the practical constraints of agentic workflows in CAE/simulation environments.

Required:

  • Experience owning the complete sales motion: outbound prospecting, discovery, technical evaluation, procurement navigation, and close — without pre-generated pipeline.

  • Demonstrated ability to sell to CAE/simulation stakeholders and build credible bridges to engineering managers and VP/Director-level buyers in enterprise settings.

  • Experience building and executing a go-to-market playbook in a founding or early-stage sales environment.

  • Comfortable with ambiguity — founding-hire temperament with a bias for action and documentation.

Nice to have:

  • Direct experience selling into environments that use ANSYS, SIMULIA, Altair, or Siemens Simcenter — as a vendor rep, reseller, or competitor regularly engaging these tool owners.

  • Background selling CAD/CAE/PLM/EDA or adjacent deep-tech (dev tools, MLOps, infrastructure) into large enterprises.

  • Formal background in mechanical, aerospace, or a related engineering discipline, or strong domain fluency to converse credibly with engineers.

  • Prior early or founding sales hire experience highly desirable.

Location & Work Arrangement

This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Compensation & Details

  • Employment type: Full-time

  • Compensation details were not specified for this role — competitive package expected at a well-funded early-stage company.

Clera

Website: https://www.getclera.com/

Headquarter Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Employee Count: 1-10

Year Founded: 2025

IPO Status: Private

Last Funding Type: Pre-Seed

Industries: Artificial Intelligence (AI) ⋅ Career Planning ⋅ Information Technology ⋅ Recruiting