Startup Account Executive, Staffing
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Overview
Job Description
About Mercor
Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We partner with leading AI labs and enterprises to provide the human intelligence essential to AI development. Our vast talent network trains frontier AI models in the same way teachers teach students: by sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can't be captured in code alone. Today, more than 30,000 experts in our network collectively earn over $2 million a day.
Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society. Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.
About the Role
We are building the definitive talent infrastructure for top-tier enterprises. As our Startup Account Executive, you will own the relationship with venture-backed tech companies and growth-stage startups that need world-class engineering, research, and technical talent deployed fast. Your buyers are CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Heads of AI, and technical founders who evaluate vendors on talent quality, speed to deploy, and technical credibility. You do not need a staffing background; you need to understand how builders buy and how to earn trust with technical leaders. You will be a one-person revenue engine: building pipeline, running discovery, presenting solutions, negotiating terms, and ensuring successful account launches.
What You Will Do
Own and drive new business for Mercor. Find your way to the right people at prospective customers, educate them about AI-powered contingent workforce solutions, and help them succeed. You'll own the full sales cycle, from first call to close
Run a high-velocity outbound motion and build the pipeline through the AI/tech startup ecosystem: VC networks, founder communities, Twitter/X, GitHub, conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, YC Demo Day)
Manage rapid sales cycles (1-4 weeks): qualify, demo, propose, close
Speak the language of technical buyers: understand ML infrastructure, cloud, engineering org design, and talent market dynamics
Develop startup-specific packaging: flexible engagement models, pilot programs, and ramp-based pricing
Become a visible presence in the AI/tech talent community through content, events, and thought leadership
Feed market intelligence back to Product and Delivery
What You Bring
4-7 years of quota-carrying sales experience in SaaS, developer tools, tech marketplaces, or tech-enabled talent platforms
Track record of selling to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and technical founders
Experience at a high-growth startup or as an early sales hire (employee #1-30)
Genuine curiosity and fluency in technology, especially AI/ML: can discuss fine-tuning, inference costs, GPU clusters, and engineering team scaling
Strong personal network in the tech/AI startup ecosystem
Bias toward speed: default urgency in everything
Bachelor's degree in a technical or business field; CS or engineering background a plus
Automate your job search with Sonara.
Submit 10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.
