Account Executive

Who you are

• 5+ years of experience owning a book of existing customers in enterprise B2B software, with a record of retaining and growing ARR, managing renewals and churn risk, and negotiating contracts
• Experience selling to technical users and to executive buyers, and adjusting your message for each
• A structured approach to account planning and multi-threading
• Clear communication in English, written and spoken
• Daily, hands-on use of AI tools in your sales workflow, with examples of work you have redesigned or cut as a result
• High agency: a record of owning accounts end-to-end and solving hard problems without waiting for a blueprint
• Experience co-selling with cloud providers and partners
• Comfort with usage-based or consumption pricing, and with using usage data to spot risk and opportunity
• Experience selling open source based data technology
• Experience running customer advocacy: references, case studies, event speakers

What the job involves

• Grow each account in your book beyond its current baseline in usage and commitments. This is the primary mandate of the role
• Build and run an account plan for every priority account, with clear goals, stakeholders, risks and expansion opportunities across the Aiven platform
• Partner with Solutions Architects and Technical Account Managers on technical validation, and bring in Product Engineering, Aiven leadership and executives where a customer needs senior backing
• Spot contraction and churn risk early, using usage and sentiment signals surfaced by agents, then act on them before the customer does. Build a protection plan for each risk with the Aiven customer team
• Find cross-sell and upsell opportunities across the Aiven platform, and see them through to close
• Run renewals as a plan, not an event. Know the commercial position, the decision makers and the competing options well before the renewal date. Lead commercial and contract negotiation through to signature
• Qualify and manage every renewal, expansion and new logo opportunity with MEDDPICC
• Build relationships with the builders who use the Aiven platform day to day (engineering, platform and product leads) and the teams who consume the services it delivers
• Build relationships with executives, budget holders and senior IT decision makers
• Use your relationships to build positive sentiment, then work with Marketing to turn it into events, webinars, case studies and references matched to the right prospect
• Represent Aiven at UKI industry events, and feed customer, competitive and market insight back to Product, Engineering and leadership
• Own new logo opportunities in the UKI territory, from prospecting through close, using cold and warm outreach
• Own how your work gets done: decide which tasks you do, which agents do and which stop entirely. Review this as the tools improve
• Run account research, risk and usage monitoring, outreach drafting and forecasting through agents. Spend your time on judgment, relationships and negotiation
• Keep Salesforce accurate so the forecast, and the agents reading it, reflect reality
• Share what works with the team. The way you work is a product too
• How we measure success;
• Quota attainment, net revenue retention and gross revenue retention for your book, against target
• Expansion ARR from cross-sell and upsell, against target
• Churn and contraction risks flagged early, each with a documented protection plan
• Executive and budget holder coverage across priority accounts
• Customer references, case studies and event speakers delivered each year
• Pipeline creation, deal progression and on-time opportunity booking
• Forecast accuracy and CRM hygiene
• Time spent on customer conversations vs. admin and research, trending the right way quarter on quarter
• Workflow improvements adopted by the wider team

Benefits

• Stocks: Stock options for permanent employees
• Learning & growth: Get ahead with an individual learning budget, access to a web learning platform, coaching, and the ever-growing Aiven library
• Work/life balance: Flexible, regular working hours, and hybrid work friendly
• Health care: Private health and dental care
• Work equipment: The tools you need to do your job
• Cool, collaborative work spaces: with free drinks, treats and fruit