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Account Executive

Lightning AI

Lightning AI

Sales & Business Development
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2024

Who we are

Lightning AI is the company reimagining the way AI is built. After creating and releasing PyTorch Lightning in 2019, Lightning AI was launched to reshape the development of artificial intelligence products for commercial and academic use.

Focusing on simplicity, sustainability, modularity, and extensibility, Lightning AI streamlines the lifecycle of machine learning development to expand widespread AI adoption. Its aim is to enable individual and enterprise users to build deployment-ready AI tools without having to hire experts or sink resources into in-house infrastructure.

Lightning AI is a company with offices in New York City, Palo Alto, and London backed by $58.6 million in funding from Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

What’s important to us

We are building a company of people that care deeply about the impact of AI on our society. We value:

  • Integrity: AI is bound to change how we interact with computers, with each other, and the world—for the better. We are committed to building an inclusive company and developing ethical AI that improves humanity.
  • Perseverance: Be bold, take the initiative, and make decisions with confidence. We empower our community, clients, and colleagues to tackle the impossible.
  • Curiosity: We are genuinely interested in finding solutions to advance the state of AI research and foster its application in novel products. It's not about whether we can solve the problem, but how.
We also feel that it’s essential to point out the self-evident here – there’s a genuine lack of diversity in our industry, which has to change. One of our goals is to help drive that change. Lightning AI is fully committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion, and we embrace how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.

What we're looking for

We are looking for a Senior Enterprise Account Executive with experience selling highly technical, developer-focused products to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, software engineers, researchers, and/or data scientists. You thrive in a fast-paced, start-up environment focusing on every step of the sales process, from prospecting, qualifying, and nurturing leads to running demos, negotiating contracts, and closing deals.

As our 3rd Senior AE, you will report to our VP of Product, Priya Shivakumar, and work closely with our CEO and CTO to get clients over the line. We want someone who thinks about how to uncover and address our customers’ problems to drive customer acquisition while feeding their requirements back to inform the product roadmap.

What you’ll do

  • Build an understanding of our target markets, value proposition, and pricing models to not only meet but exceed quarterly revenue targets.
  • Focus on high-quality, consistent outbound prospecting across key market segments to build the sales pipeline and optimize the customer funnel.
  • Qualify and develop both inbound and outbound sales leads.
  • Collaborate with the product, engineering, and marketing teams to continuously improve and iterate on the sales process.
  • Analyze industry trends and customer segmentation to identify and capitalize on new sources of qualified leads.
  • Work alongside the marketing team to increase the number and quality of inbound leads.
  • Champion data integrity and accuracy using HubSpot to track activity and manage sales opportunities through the funnel.

How we evaluate your candidacy

Our interviews will not only give us insight into your skillset but give you insight into our company.

  • Recruiter Interview - 15 minutes: You will speak with our recruiter about your background and what you are looking for in your next role. We want to know why you are interested in joining us and what questions you have about the team.
  • Hiring Manager Interview - 30 minutes: The first interview will be an introductory interview with our VP of Product focused on core sales expertise and general product knowledge.
  • Virtual Onsite - ~3 hours: You'll have the opportunity to meet with our CTO, Head of Product, Chief of Staff as well as more time with Priya Shivakumar for 45 minutes each and work through exercises spanning prospecting, lead qualification, sales presentations, and culture. We will provide more information on the sales presentation before booking these sessions.
  • Sales Pitch and CEO interviews: 1.5 hours: Now that you’ve met with our team and learned more about Lightning, this will be an opportunity to meet with the team again and pitch the Lightning platform, along with meeting with our CEO.
  • Offer: We determine your level based on your interview performance and make an offer based on geo-located salary bands updated monthly using Carta's Total Compensation tool. During the presentation call, we will review the base salary, benefits, number of options, notional option value, and strike price. We would like to know if you accept our offer within 7 days.
    • If we hire you in New York City or San Francisco, your base salary would fall within the bands below. Please remember that the equity portion of your offer is not included in these numbers and represents a significant part of your total compensation.
      • Senior Account Executive, Enterprise: $150,000 - $190,000 base salary
    • Every member of our sales team will have a commission plan that includes uncapped commissions, guaranteed 3-month ramp compensation, and quarterly payments.

When you'll hear from us

How you’ll be rewarded

We champion equal pay for work of equal or comparable value based on the level of skill, effort, responsibility, and impact of any given role. We use Carta's Total Compensation tool to enable data-driven decision-making around benchmarks, levels, and planning. We are confident that our compensation practices are equitable, explainable, fair, and competitive, and in the spirit of transparency, we provide a compensation bands for each open role.

We pride ourselves on making sure our employees enjoy a good quality of life, no matter where they live. We offer competitive base salaries and stock options with a 25% one year cliff and monthly vesting thereafter. For our international employees, we work with Velocity Global to pay you in your local currency and provide equitable benefits across the globe.

In the US, we offer:

  • 90% monthly premium contributions towards medical, dental, and vision plans for you, you and your spouse, you and your children, or you and your family, along with HSA and FSA options. Our health plans are offered through Aetna, a health insurance company with a care network encompassing 1.3 million doctors and 5,700 hospitals across America.
  • Life and AD&D insurance equal to 1x salary, as well as optional supplemental life insurance for extra peace of mind
  • Flexible paid time off plus 3 weeks of company-wide mandatory vacation in May, August, and December. Most of our employees take a total of 25-30 days off per year.
  • 12 weeks of paid family leave for employees who have worked with the company for 6-12 months and 16 weeks of paid family leave for employees who have worked with the company for 12+ months
  • $500 monthly meal reimbursement, including groceries & food delivery services
  • $1,000 1-time home office build out for a desk, chair, keyboard, pair of headphones, and/or other home office supplies
  • $1,000 annual learning & development stipend for classes, conferences, certifications, and continuing education
  • 100% covered bike membership
  • $45/month to ClassPass, a platform providing access to over 30,000 gyms and studios, as well as 5,000 beauty and spa partners, in 28 countries
  • Access to monthly equity education sessions hosted by Carta and 1:1 meetings with Certified Public Accountants so that you can take proactive measures to minimize taxes due and maximize the value of your equity
  • Ability to early exercise your stock options after 1 year of continuous employment
  • Opportunities to obtain an employment-based immigrant VISA for relocation every 3 years
  • Membership to a local co-working space upon request
  • 24/7 access to:
    • Teladoc, the leader in whole-person virtual care with access to doctors, therapists, and medical experts anywhere you are by phone or video
    • One Medical, a patient-focused on-demand primary care practice
    • Kindbody, a fertility, gynecology, and wellness service provider
    • HealthAdvocate, an employee assistance program (EAP)
    • Talkspace, a comprehensive, personalized mental healthcare platform providing access to licensed therapists for therapy, medication, assessment, healthy living support, and self-help tools
    • Headspace, a guided meditation application focused on improving mindfulness, sleep, and stress-relief