Account Executive

Kernel•San Francisco, CA

29d•$220,000 - $265,000

About The Position

Kernel is seeking an Account Executive to be one of the first members of their lean sales team. This role will own the full sales cycle for Kernel, from initial conversation to closed deal. Responsibilities include prospecting and qualifying accounts, running discovery to understand customer problems, and building relationships with developers and technical leaders. This is a technical-leaning AE role where understanding prospects' technical requirements is key, and collaboration with customer success, engineering, and product teams is expected to facilitate the sales process.

Requirements

4+ years of closing experience in a sales role, ideally selling technical or developer-facing products
Comfortable selling to technical buyers: you don't need to write code, but you can hold your own in a conversation about architecture, APIs, and how a product actually gets used
Experience running a full-cycle sales process, from outbound or inbound lead through negotiation and close
High tolerance for ambiguity — most of our customers are building things that don't have a playbook yet
You use AI daily in your own workflow, and are excited to be in an AI-native space
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the judgment to know when to loop in teammates versus close on your own

Nice To Haves

Experience selling developer tools, infrastructure, or API-first products
Familiarity with AI agents, browser automation, or the broader agent tooling landscape
Prior experience at an early-stage startup where you helped build the sales process, not just execute one

Responsibilities

Own your pipeline end-to-end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, negotiation, and close
Build and manage relationships with developers, engineering leaders, and technical decision-makers evaluating Kernel for production use
Partner with solutions engineering, customer engineering/success, and engineering as needed to scope technical requirements and keep deals moving from demo to signed contract
Give the team an accurate, up-to-date read on your pipeline and deal status
Represent the voice of the customer internally, feeding market and competitive intelligence back into product and go-to-market strategy
Help define what a repeatable sales motion looks like at Kernel — you're building the playbook, not just running one