Founding Account Executive, Database Optimization (DBO)

Cast AI

16d • Remote

About The Position

Cast AI is seeking a Founding Account Executive to drive new business for its Database Optimizer (DBO) product. This role involves owning the entire sales cycle, from pipeline generation and conversion to technical discovery, demonstrations, proof of concepts, business case development, negotiation, and closing new customers. This is a hands-on individual contributor position with significant influence, offering the opportunity to shape the ideal customer profile, refine positioning, and contribute to a scalable sales playbook. The primary focus is on acquiring new customers in North America, targeting upper mid-market and emerging-enterprise organizations with significant database scale, as well as fast-growing cloud-native companies. The role will be supported by product marketing, demand generation, and AI-assisted lead nurturing, with technical support from Product and Engineering resources. Success will be measured by new annual recurring revenue, net-new customers, qualified pipeline, referenceable wins, forecast quality, and the repeatability of the sales motion.

Requirements

• Five or more years of quota-carrying B2B technology sales experience, including enterprise or upper mid-market customers.
• A consistent record of meeting or exceeding new-business targets and winning net-new logos.
• Experience selling database, DBaaS, caching, data infrastructure, database observability, or application-performance solutions to technical organizations. Adjacent infrastructure experience may qualify when it includes repeated sales to DBAs or database-owning engineering teams.
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL or MySQL and familiarity with concepts such as query performance, query optimization, caching, connection pooling, read replicas, and automated database tuning.
• Experience leading initial technical discovery and standard product demonstrations, with good judgment about when to involve Product or Engineering specialists.
• Ability to explore a customer's architecture, connect technical pain to business value, and recognize when Product or Engineering should join a deeper discussion.
• Experience running time-bound technical evaluations or proofs of concept in partnership with customer and engineering teams.
• Ability to create pipeline through focused outbound activity in addition to converting company-generated demand.
• Experience navigating multi-threaded sales involving DBAs, engineers, engineering leadership, security, procurement, and executive buyers.
• Strong qualification, pipeline management, and forecasting discipline.
• Comfort operating without a mature playbook and a demonstrated bias toward action, ownership, and learning.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to travel up to 25% for customer meetings, industry events, and periodic collaboration with our European Product and Engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience at a database platform, DBaaS, caching, database-performance, or observability company.
• A record of closing initial lands in the $50,000-$100,000 ARR range and expanding them over time.
• Experience building an early sales motion for a new product or category.
• Strong technical fluency in relational databases and cloud infrastructure without losing focus on business outcomes.
• Experience selling effectively in a 60-90-day evaluation cycle that includes a proof of concept.
• Experience using customer and deal evidence to influence product strategy, messaging, and go-to-market execution.

Responsibilities

• Own the full DBO sales cycle, from targeted prospecting and sales-ready inbound opportunities through discovery, demonstration, proof of concept, negotiation, and close.
• Build a meaningful portion of your pipeline through focused outbound activity while converting demand created through organic search, paid programs, events, partnerships, and AI-assisted nurture.
• Lead credible discovery with DBAs, application and platform engineers, FinOps teams, and engineering leaders to understand database cost, latency, scale, reliability, and operational challenges.
• Deliver standard DBO product demonstrations independently and explain how autonomous caching, connection pooling, AI-driven query rewriting, and automated tuning apply to a customer's environment.
• Define a clear value hypothesis, entry criteria, measurable success criteria, and mutual action plan before beginning a proof of concept.
• Partner with Product and Engineering throughout discovery and qualified proofs of concept, bringing the right technical expertise into architecture, security, compatibility, and performance discussions.
• Translate technical findings into quantified business cases for engineering leaders and executive buyers.
• Develop champions and multi-thread relationships across technical, economic, security, procurement, and executive stakeholders.
• Maintain disciplined opportunity qualification, pipeline management, and forecasting, and provide clear commercial insights to leadership.
• Capture customer feedback, objections, competitive patterns, and win/loss insights to improve the product, positioning, and sales playbook.
• Represent Cast AI at selected database, cloud-native, and infrastructure conferences and customer events.
• Use AI-powered workflows to improve account research, preparation, follow-up, pipeline analysis, and selling effectiveness.

Benefits

• Equity options
• Learning budget for professional and personal development
• Team-building budget and company events to connect with colleagues
• Equipment budget to ensure you have everything you need

What This Job Offers

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