Sales Director, AI Sales

Sonar•San Francisco, CA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

This is a player-coach Director role and one of the most consequential go-to-market hires Sonar will make this year. You will build, lead, and personally sell alongside a founding team of 6–8 Senior Account Executives covering AI-native startups (Series A–C) and digital-native unicorns headquartered in the Bay Area. You will own the team's number, the team's culture, and a small portfolio of the most strategic accounts in the territory — typically the named foundation-model labs and category-defining digital natives where executive-level relationship gravity matters most. You report directly to the Sonar CRO. You will have visibility and partnership with Product, Engineering, and Developer Advocacy from day one, because this platform is technical, the buyer is technical, and the win patterns require the GTM leader to be as fluent in the product as the people building it. You will set the operating cadence — forecasting, pipeline reviews, deal inspection, account planning — and you will be the executive sponsor in the room when our largest deals are being decided. This is a Bay Area field role. The buyers we sell to value being met where they are, and we expect this Director to spend real time in customer offices, at meetups, and at our San Mateo HQ — not behind a screen. Sonar's revenue engine is built on high-volume, product-led growth — and the Bay Area team does not abandon that. While strategic enterprise deals will anchor the team's largest logos, a meaningful portion of the business comes from efficiently converting PLG signals — workspace signups, GitHub installs, developer trial activity — into closed revenue at velocity. You will lead a team that runs both motions in parallel: long-cycle strategic pursuits and shorter-cycle, inside-sales-style closes that do not require white-glove treatment to get to a signature. The best Directors here know when to deploy depth and when to deploy speed.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive B2B SaaS sales experience.
4+ years in a frontline sales leadership role (Manager or Director) carrying a team quota and personally hitting it.
Led teams selling technical products to engineering, DevOps, platform, or security buyers — ideally at a dev tools, code intelligence, AppSec, developer productivity, observability, or AI infrastructure company.
Documented track record of consistent team quota attainment (multiple years of 100%+).
Personally closed seven-figure deals as an individual contributor earlier in your career.
Hired and ramped at least 6–10 quota-carrying AEs in a single role, with strong retention and ramp metrics.
Hands-on experience running developer-led / PLG-to-enterprise motions where bottoms-up adoption shapes the buying committee.
Technical fluency — Git, CI/CD, code review workflows, SDLC tooling — to a degree that engineering leaders take you seriously without an SE in the room.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area; willing to be physically present in San Mateo and with customers across SF, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and the Peninsula multiple days per week.
Experience building or managing a velocity or inside-sales track alongside a strategic enterprise motion — comfortable with higher deal volume, shorter sales cycles, and PLG-sourced pipeline that does not require full-cycle white-glove treatment.
Proficiency with inside-sales tooling: Salesforce (SFDC), Outreach or Salesloft, Gong or Chorus — and the reporting structures that support a pipeline-velocity motion.
Built a sales team from zero — first hire, founding territory, or first specialist function — at a Series B/C or growth-stage company.
Sold into AI-native companies (foundation model labs, AI application companies, AI infrastructure) or digital-native unicorns (fintech, marketplaces, dev tools, modern data stack).
Director or Senior Manager inside a larger company who stood up a new product line or specialist motion.
Prior experience selling code quality, code security, AppSec (SAST / SCA), developer productivity, or AI coding tools.
Technical background — CS degree, prior engineering or DevRel experience, or visible technical depth.

Nice To Haves

You are a sales leader who has been the one in the room closing the deal, not just the one running the pipeline call.
You've built and led teams selling technical products to engineering buyers — and you've done it in the Bay Area, where the bar for technical credibility is non-negotiable.
You think about hiring the way founders do: you have a bench, you can close talent the way you close customers, and you know that the team you build in the first six months sets the ceiling for everything that follows.
You're comfortable with ambiguity, you don't need a fully built playbook to operate, and you write the playbook as you go.
You read AI Twitter / X, you have a point of view on where AI coding agents are headed, and you can hold your own with a CTO talking about CI pipelines and code review workflows.
You'd rather be in the room than on Zoom, and you expect the same from the team you lead.
You have managed teams that run multiple deal sizes simultaneously and understand that a fast PLG-conversion close is as commercially important as a six-month strategic land.
You have built or operated a velocity track inside an enterprise team — whether a dedicated inside-sales pod, a PLG-conversion motion, or a mid-market segment — and you know what good looks like at both ends of the deal-size spectrum.
You do not mistake speed for sloppiness: you've put in place the sequence discipline, CRM rigour, and stage-conversion accountability that make a volume motion run cleanly.

Responsibilities

Full-funnel revenue performance for Sonar's AI Sales Specialist team in your region: pipeline generation, conversion, forecast accuracy, attainment, and net retention on landed accounts.
A personal book of the 2–3 most strategic accounts in the territory — modeling the selling motion you expect from the team.
Recruiting, hiring, and ramping the founding 6–8 AEs — with a relentless bar, because every early hire shapes the next ten.
The operating cadence: weekly pipeline, deal reviews, MEDDPICC-grade qualification, monthly forecast, quarterly business reviews — without devolving into bureaucracy.
The voice of the customer back to Product and Engineering; turning field signal into roadmap priorities.
Partnership with Marketing and Developer Advocacy to convert bottoms-up developer adoption into enterprise revenue across the Sonar platform.
External representation of Sonar in the Bay Area — at AI ecosystem events, customer roundtables, and analyst conversations.
Pipeline velocity alongside pipeline size — tracking and managing time-to-close, stage-conversion rates, and product-qualified lead (PQL) conversion across deal sizes from mid-market velocity plays to strategic enterprise pursuits.
The inside-sales infrastructure: Salesforce hygiene, Outreach or Salesloft sequence discipline, Gong review cadence — ensuring the team has the tooling and habits to run high-volume pipeline efficiently alongside high-touch strategic deals.
Systematic conversion of Sonar's PLG signal at scale — developing repeatable plays that turn developer trial activity, workspace signups, and GitHub install data into qualified pipeline without over-engineering the process.

Benefits

We value diversity, equity, and inclusion
We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best.
We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome all qualified applicants, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.
If you need any accommodation, please reach out to us at [email protected]
All offers of employment at Sonar are contingent upon the results of a comprehensive background check and reference verification conducted before the start date.
We do not currently support visa candidates in the US.
Applications that are submitted through agencies or third party recruiters will not be considered.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses.
These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment.
Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.
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