Head of Sales

Harper

2d•$225,000 - $325,000•Remote

About The Position

Harper is hiring a revenue leader to own new business, pipeline, the committed forecast, and sales through channel and cloud partners. This is a remote, high-ownership player-coach role reporting to the CEO. The Head of Sales will personally prospect and close enterprise deals while building a small sales team and establishing Harper’s sales playbook and go-to-market approach. Harper’s distributed application platform combines data, messaging, and compute in one runtime close to the user. Its customers use the platform for commerce and digital experiences, real-time messaging and IoT, and AI and agent workloads. The Head of Sales will work across direct enterprise sales and a growing partner ecosystem, collaborating with the CEO, Operations (including RevOps and deal desk), Finance, Marketing, field engineering, and the Partnerships lead. The role will lead the Enterprise Account Manager and shape future sales hires. The position calls for a hands-on leader who can build qualified pipeline, convert pilots into paid contracts, develop partner-sourced revenue, maintain customer retention and expansion, and provide a disciplined, evidence-based forecast. The role also includes developing sales processes, hiring and enabling the team, and designing commission plans with Operations and Finance. Compensation is a base salary of $225,000–$325,000, with on-target earnings of $375,000–$540,000 at a 60/40 base-to-variable split. Variable compensation is tied to new business closed against the committed number.

Requirements

10+ years selling enterprise software, with significant experience selling databases, data platforms, CDN, cloud, or developer infrastructure to large enterprises.
3+ years leading quota-carrying sellers or account managers, including setting quotas and running a forecast.
Personally closed new enterprise deals within the last 12 months.
A network of buyers and sellers that can be contacted and used to recruit talent.
Experience closing meaningful revenue with or through channel partners such as CDNs, hyperscalers, resellers, or systems integrators, including understanding attribution and co-selling.
Experience developing pipeline review processes and qualification criteria with sales operations, with a track record of reliable committed forecasts.
Experience closing six-figure, multi-stakeholder deals involving pilots or proofs of concept, including usage- or consumption-based pricing.
Understanding of deal economics and gross margin, with the ability to maintain a price floor.
Comfort with ambiguity, ownership, and accountability in fast-moving, early-stage environments.
Excellent communication skills and ability to sell to technical and business buyers and communicate an honest forecast to the CEO and board.

Nice To Haves

Experience selling with or through Akamai, Fastly, AWS, GCP, or a global systems integrator.
Experience selling to large retail and commerce companies where speed and data freshness drive revenue.
Experience building a sales function at a venture- or PE-backed company, including initial commission plans.
Experience with edge computing, real-time data, caching, or data delivery solutions.
Hands-on experience with Salesforce and HubSpot.
Familiarity with AI and agent workloads and the infrastructure behind them.
Fluency with AI tools for research, account planning, and forecasting.

Responsibilities

Build and work a list of named target accounts that fit Harper’s ideal customer profile.
Generate qualified opportunities each quarter against a scorecard agreed with the CEO.
Sell Harper’s named use-case solutions and bundles, making the offering and pricing clear to buyers.
Run pilots on standard terms with clear success criteria and convert them to paid contracts.
Identify early customers for AI-adjacent workloads as Harper tests that market.
Work with the Partnerships lead to turn channel relationships into sourced pipeline and closed deals.
Co-sell against joint target account lists and grow revenue from new channel and cloud partners.
Establish deal registration and partner attribution processes.
Ensure new partners have signed agreements, clear fees, and a support model before their pipeline is counted.
Lead the Enterprise Account Manager and support retention and expansion across major accounts.
Protect gross revenue retention and drive expansion through new use cases in existing accounts.
Set opportunity-stage exit criteria and require a close plan and paper path for every deal.
Run weekly pipeline reviews using clean Salesforce data and address opportunities that are static for 30 or more days.
Own the committed forecast and align the sales forecast with Salesforce and Finance’s operating model.
Measure stage conversion and win rates and use closed-lost data to refine target markets and sales strategy.
Build the sales team and hire future revenue roles.
Design commission plans with Operations and Finance that tie variable compensation to company goals.
Enable field engineers and solutions teams on discovery, business cases, and pilot execution.
Partner with Marketing on sales enablement, including solution materials and pricing that partner representatives can use.
Personally prospect, develop new accounts, and close enterprise deals while building Harper’s sales process and playbook.