Account Executive - SF Bay Area

• Drive new logo acquisition. Own the end-to-end sales cycle, from prospecting and qualification through technical evaluation, commercial negotiations, and closing.
• Build and execute account strategies to consistently win new customers. Build pipeline through both PLG and SLG. Generate your own opportunities through targeted outbound prospecting, account research, networking, and industry events. Work closely with Marketing and Developer Relations to engage prospective customers and identify opportunities emerging from the Milvus community and Zilliz Cloud adoption.
• Understand customer workloads and business needs. Engage developers, engineering leaders, platform teams, and business stakeholders to understand their architecture, technical challenges, and AI application requirements. Connect Zilliz's capabilities to meaningful technical and business outcomes.
• Turn technical evaluations into production adoption. Partner with Solutions Architects to guide proof-of-concept evaluations, address technical and commercial requirements, and help customers move from experimentation to production deployment.
• Drive consumption-based revenue. Develop a clear understanding of customers' expected workloads, deployment timelines, and usage potential. Focus on establishing meaningful recurring consumption rather than contract value alone.
• Navigate complex enterprise sales cycles. Build relationships with technical champions, economic buyers, and executive stakeholders. Manage competing priorities, security and procurement requirements, and commercial negotiations to move opportunities forward.
• Own pipeline management and forecasting. Maintain accurate CRM records and develop realistic forecasts based on opportunity progression, customer readiness, expected production timelines, and anticipated consumption revenue.
• Support early customer growth. Stay engaged through initial production adoption, identify opportunities for additional workloads, and help establish a strong foundation for long-term customer growth.
• Bring insights back to the business. Share customer feedback, competitive intelligence, and market trends with Sales, Product, Marketing, and technical teams to help strengthen our go-to-market execution.

• 5+ years of B2B sales experience, ideally in cloud infrastructure, databases, data platforms, developer tools, or other technical enterprise software.
• A proven track record of generating pipeline, acquiring new customers, and consistently achieving or exceeding sales targets.
• Experience with consumption-based, usage-based, product-led, or open-source-driven businesses is highly preferred. We also value candidates with strong enterprise sales experience who can adapt to these models.
• Strong prospecting and business development skills, with the ability to create opportunities independently rather than relying solely on inbound leads.
• Experience selling complex technical solutions to engineering leaders, architects, platform teams, and other technical stakeholders while effectively engaging executive and economic buyers.
• Familiarity with technical evaluations, proof-of-concept processes, and the factors that influence infrastructure purchasing and production deployment decisions.
• Strong commercial judgment and forecasting discipline, including the ability to assess customer potential, navigate complex sales cycles, and prioritize opportunities effectively.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to translate technical capabilities into clear business value.
• A high level of ownership, initiative, and execution. You're resourceful, comfortable navigating ambiguity, and willing to roll up your sleeves in a fast-moving startup environment.
• A collaborative mindset, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in AI, databases, cloud infrastructure, and open-source technologies.

The range above reflects annual base salary. This role offers a 50/50 base salary and target commission structure, with annual on-target earnings (OTE) ranging from $200,000 to $360,000.

Actual commission earnings are performance-based and subject to the applicable commission plan.