Account Executive, SMB

Aiven • Austin, TX

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

Aiven is hiring an Account Executive for its North American Customer Growth team. This is a high-velocity inside sales closing role focused on acquiring new customers and growing revenue among companies with less than $250 million in revenue, including converting users of Aiven’s self-service and trial products. The Account Executive owns the full sales cycle, from initial engagement through contract signature, and converts product-usage signals and prospecting activity into qualified opportunities and closed revenue.

The role targets 10 new customer logos annually, a $25,000 average ARR per logo, and $300,000 in total ARR per fiscal year. Success also includes qualifying six opportunities per month using MEDDPICC, generating $1.4 million in qualified annual pipeline, maintaining at least 85% forecast accuracy at commit, and sustaining at least 3x quarterly pipeline coverage. Sales cycles generally run 30–60 days. The role engages technical decision-makers and requires a disciplined, evidence-based sales process, rapid follow-up, and the ability to explain the business value of Aiven’s managed open-source data platform.

The Account Executive collaborates with Solution Architects, Marketing, and Customer Success, and provides customer feedback to inform product priorities. The position requires 10–20% travel for field events, team meetings, and customer engagements as needed. Aiven describes its work style as hybrid and provides equipment for the role.

Aiven offers competitive base salary and commission with overachievement accelerators, participation in its equity plan, learning support, an annual learning budget, wellbeing support, health insurance options, dental and vision benefits, life and AD&D insurance, health savings account contributions, short- and long-term disability plans, and 401(k) and Roth 401(k) retirement plans. Employees may also be paid for qualifying contributions to open-source projects through the Plankton program and use up to five days per year to volunteer.

Requirements

• 1–3 years of success in inside sales or SDR/BDR roles, with demonstrated progression and quota attainment.
• Proven ability to independently close deals and own the full sales cycle through contract signature.
• Track record of consistent quota attainment of 90–100% or higher in a high-velocity sales environment.
• Experience with $15,000–$50,000 ACV deal sizes and 30–90 day sales cycles.
• Experience with product-led growth or trial-conversion sales motions where product-usage signals inform sales engagement.
• Ability to interpret product-usage data to prioritize outreach and assess buying intent.
• Ability to engage self-service users appropriately and sell to technical buyers who may already have evaluated the product.
• Demonstrated ability to generate pipeline through outbound prospecting, including cold calls, personalized emails, LinkedIn engagement, and video messaging.
• Experience working marketing-sourced leads with rapid follow-up and disciplined qualification.
• Ability to maintain high prospecting activity, including 80 or more weekly touches, while preserving quality and personalization.
• Strong research skills using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, 6sense, or similar tools to identify trigger events and buying signals.
• Familiarity with MEDDPICC, MEDDIC, or a similar qualification framework; formal training is preferred but not required if structured qualification discipline is demonstrated.
• Ability to document qualification evidence in a CRM and distinguish sales activity from opportunity progress.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure, cloud services, and developer tools sufficient to hold credible conceptual conversations with technical buyers.
• Ability to discuss Kafka use cases, PostgreSQL compared with other databases, cloud deployment models, and operational trade-offs at a conceptual level.
• Ability to learn technical concepts quickly and translate them into business value for different buyer personas.
• Interest in open-source technologies and the developer ecosystem.
• Excellent verbal communication for discovery calls, demonstrations, and negotiations conducted primarily by video and phone.
• Strong written communication for personalized outreach, follow-up emails, and proposal summaries.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts as clear value statements for different audiences.
• Professional presence that builds credibility with technical decision-makers.
• Self-driven and disciplined, with the ability to maintain activity and quality standards independently.
• Competitive, coachable, resilient, and accountable, with a willingness to seek feedback and improve.
• Willingness to travel 10–20% for field events, team meetings, and customer engagements as needed.
• Applicants must include a note of fewer than 200 words describing their highest-velocity month in their current or most recent sales role, the opportunities worked, close rate, and actions that drove the performance.

Nice To Haves

• Formal training in MEDDPICC or a similar sales qualification framework.
• Experience with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, 6sense, or similar prospecting and research tools.

Responsibilities

• Close 10 new customer logos annually, targeting $25,000 average ARR per logo and $300,000 total ARR against the annual quota.
• Own the full sales cycle from initial engagement through contract signature, including discovery, qualification, demonstrations, proposals, negotiation, and close.
• Execute 30–60 day sales cycles with urgency and discipline, and maintain at least 85% forecast accuracy at commit.
• Monitor trial activations, self-service usage, and consumption patterns to identify and prioritize high-intent prospects.
• Engage self-service users showing expansion signals and convert them to committed contracts; respond quickly to product-led growth opportunities.
• Qualify six opportunities per month using MEDDPICC and generate $1.4 million in qualified pipeline annually through outbound prospecting, product-led conversions, field events, and marketing campaigns.
• Complete 80–100 or more weekly prospecting touches across calls, email, LinkedIn, and video messaging.
• Follow up rapidly on marketing-sourced leads and qualify them consistently.
• Build and maintain target account lists of 75–100 ideal customer profile companies in the territory.
• Build relationships with technical decision-makers, including Engineering Managers, Platform Leads, Senior Engineers, DevOps Managers, and Data Engineering Leads.
• Position Aiven’s value in terms relevant to technical buyers, including reduced operational overhead, faster time-to-production, developer productivity, and infrastructure reliability.
• Challenge customers’ existing data infrastructure approaches and demonstrate Aiven’s value compared with self-managed open-source systems, hyperscaler native services, and other managed platforms.
• Conduct product demonstrations tailored to customer pain points and use cases.
• Document all MEDDPICC elements in Salesforce for each qualified opportunity and advance deals only when stage-appropriate evidence is documented.
• Forecast based on documented evidence of the decision process, timeline, and buying authority.
• Develop expertise in Aiven’s platform and relevant open-source technologies, and articulate business value using concrete customer outcomes.
• Partner with Solution Architects on technical validation for opportunities requiring deeper architectural engagement.
• Coordinate with Marketing on campaign follow-up, event participation, and lead-quality feedback.
• Share customer feedback, objections, feature requests, and competitive intelligence with product teams.
• Coordinate with Customer Success to hand off closed accounts for onboarding and adoption.
• Meet and exceed monthly, quarterly, and annual quotas, maintain at least 3x pipeline coverage against quarterly targets, and take ownership of territory results.
• Travel 10–20% for field events, team meetings, and customer engagements as needed.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary and commission structure with accelerators for overachievement.
• Participation in Aiven’s equity plan.
• Hybrid work policy.
• Equipment needed to perform the role.
• Employer-supported professional growth, learning platforms, and an annual learning budget.
• Global Employee Assistance Program.
• Paid opportunity to contribute to qualifying open-source projects through the Plankton program.
• Up to five days per year for volunteering.
• Team member resource groups.
• Comprehensive health insurance options, including dental and vision benefits.
• Life and AD&D insurance.
• Health savings account with Aiven contributions.
• Short- and long-term disability plans.
• 401(k) and Roth 401(k) retirement plans.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed