Account Executive

About the Role

You'll be one of the first members of a lean sales team. You'll own the full sales cycle for Kernel, from initial conversation to closed deal. That means prospecting and qualifying the right accounts, running discovery that gets to the real problems a customer is solving, and building relationships with the developers and technical leaders who'll rely on Kernel for their production systems.

This is a technical-leaning AE role. You'll spend time understanding prospects' technical requirements, not just running a deck, and you'll lean on customer success & solutions, engineering, and product team members to keep technical questions from slowing down a deal.

What you'll do

• Own your pipeline end-to-end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, negotiation, and close
• Build and manage relationships with developers, engineering leaders, and technical decision-makers evaluating Kernel for production use
• Partner with solutions engineering, customer engineering/success, and engineering as needed to scope technical requirements and keep deals moving from demo to signed contract
• Give the team an accurate, up-to-date read on your pipeline and deal status
• Represent the voice of the customer internally, feeding market and competitive intelligence back into product and go-to-market strategy
• Help define what a repeatable sales motion looks like at Kernel - you're building the playbook, not just running one

What we're looking for

• 4+ years of closing experience in a sales role, ideally selling technical or developer-facing products
• Comfortable selling to technical buyers: you don't need to write code, but you can hold your own in a conversation about architecture, APIs, and how a product actually gets used
• Experience running a full-cycle sales process, from outbound or inbound lead through negotiation and close
• High tolerance for ambiguity - most of our customers are building things that don't have a playbook yet
• You use AI daily in your own workflow, and are excited to be in an AI-native space
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the judgment to know when to loop in teammates versus close on your own

Even Better

• Experience selling developer tools, infrastructure, or API-first products
• Familiarity with AI agents, browser automation, or the broader agent tooling landscape
• Prior experience at an early-stage startup where you helped build the sales process, not just execute one

What you can expect as a Kernel

• Industry-competitive salary
• Above market equity
• Premium medical + dental and vision coverage + dependent coverage
• Small, trusting team of experienced GTM and engineering staff
• Default async with minimal bureaucracy
• Daily lunches on us
• Unlimited PTO
• 401k + company match
• Relocation assistance