Sr. Sales Leader, Frontier AI, Frontier AI, Global Startup & Venture Capital

Amazon • San Francisco, CA

5d

About The Position

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a complete set of cloud services that enable
all companies, from startups to enterprises, to run virtually everything in the
cloud. The Frontier startup segment represents one of the most strategically
important and rapidly growing areas of AWS, with these customers driving the
future of AI and becoming tomorrow's enterprise leaders. As AWS continues to
lead in the GenAI and Agentic space, we seek a Senior Sales Leader of Frontier
Sales to own, operate, and define strategy for the account team working with
startups that are building technology at the edge of evolving AI technology.
This role is responsible for substantial revenue driven by AI/ML, GenAI, and
Agentic startup customers, with ambitious multi-year growth targets.

You will be responsible for setting the vision, strategic direction, plan, and
goals to win the best AI startups in Silicon Valley. This includes direct
responsibility for leading a team of senior, GenAI account managers in Northern
California within the Startups organization. You will lead a matrixed team of
Sales, Solution Architects, Business Development, and Go-To-Market functions.
Unlike traditional sales leadership roles, this position requires ownership of a
market segment with substantial revenue responsibility, direct influence on AWS
product strategy through customer feedback, and engagement at the highest levels
of AWS and Amazon. Proficiency in managing direct and matrixed resources is
required, as is expertise in emerging AI technologies with an ability to engage
technical founders.

Requirements

• 10+ years of technology-related sales or business development experience
• 5+ years of sales leadership experience
• Proven track record building and scaling successful sales teams.
• Deep expertise in the AI/ML and GenAI startup ecosystem, including understanding of foundation models, training infrastructure, and inference workloads
• Experience structuring and closing complex, multi-year deals
• Demonstrated ability to engage and influence C-suite executives and board members
• Strong relationships with top-tier venture capital firms and startup accelerators
• Experience managing matrixed teams across multiple job families
• Exceptional strategic thinking and ability to operate in highly ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with ability to engage technical and business audiences
• BA/BS degree required

Nice To Haves

• MBA/MA/MS degree in relevant fieldPrevious experience at a leading technology company with cloud expertise
• Technical background in engineering, computer science, or AI/ML
• History of working for or selling to tech startups, particularly in the AI/ML space
• Experience with AWS services, particularly SageMaker, Bedrock, EC2, and GPU infrastructure
• Proven ability to influence product roadmaps and drive cross-functional initiatives
• Established relationships with Tier 1 venture capital firms
• Understanding of GenAI technology stack, including transformers, diffusion models, and agentic AI

Responsibilities

• Drive significant annual revenue with strong YoY growth for the Frontier AI business in Silicon Valley.
• Own relationships with top-tier AI startups building frontier AI technologies across foundation models, agentic AI, and vertical AI applications.
• Execute complex, high-value opportunities with sophisticated AI startups, navigating technical, commercial, competitive, and partnership elements simultaneously.
• Meet AI revenue targets while building a pipeline of future Enterprise customers.
• Navigate highly competitive environments to secure adoption of emerging startups
• Cultivate and maintain strategic relationships with top-tier venture capital firms and leading accelerators.
• Engage directly with AWS executive leadership and customer C-suite executives.
• Serve as the voice of AI startup customers to AWS service teams, influencing product roadmaps and go-to-market strategies.
• Build and scale a high-performing sales team
• Establish consistent performance metrics and development paths across diverse technical and sales skillsets.
• Coordinate with AWS Partner Organization (APO) on co-sell, sell-with, and sell-to approaches
• Own feedback loops to service teams on customer requirements for frontier AI workloads

Benefits

• health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
• 401(k) matching
• paid time off
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level