Sales & Business Development Director

About NEAR AI Near.ai is building the future of private AI infrastructure. We’re an early-stage startup providing a confidential compute inference network that hosts open-source and custom models inside Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). Our platform offers an OpenAI API–compatible interface, enabling companies to leverage powerful AI capabilities without compromising on privacy. We serve organizations across financial services, legal, insurance, robotics, entertainment, and government sectors—companies that need verifiable privacy guarantees and can’t use traditional AI providers due to data sensitivity concerns. Unlike expensive alternatives like AWS Nitro Enclaves, we provide cryptographic attestation proving privacy at a significantly lower price point, with high SLAs and custom model hosting capabilities. The Role We’re looking for our first Sales Business Development Director to help build our sales motion from the ground up. You’ll work directly with the Chief Commercial Officer and the founding team to establish repeatable processes for identifying, engaging, and converting privacy-conscious companies into Near.ai customers. This role blends partnerships, sales development, and early GTM experimentation — but starts with outbound pipeline generation. What You’ll Do First 30 Days Immerse yourself in confidential computing, TEEs, and the Near.ai technical value proposition Master our pitch and conduct cold outreach (calls, emails, LinkedIn) to build early pipeline Shadow customer conversations and demos to understand buyer personas and pain points Set up CRM hygiene practices in Attio and establish your prospecting workflow Days 30–90 Book qualified meetings with CISOs, VPs of Engineering, Heads of Infrastructure, and AI/ML leaders Initiate 3+ pilots with target accounts in financial services, insurance, robotics, legal, and tech Build $5M+ of qualified pipeline through multi-touch outbound sequences Begin managing warm inbound leads and supporting partnership development efforts Fine-tune ideal customer profile, partner with marketing to fill top-of-funnel Attend industry conferences and events to build relationships and generate demand Ongoing Responsibilities Work with the marketing team to own the top of funnel: cold outbound prospecting, lead qualification, and meeting generation Run technical demos and workshops (with product engineering support as needed) Manage pilots through to conversion, maintaining close contact with prospects Maintain rigorous CRM hygiene and pipeline reporting in Attio Contribute to sales collateral, pitch decks, and outreach templates as we iterate on messaging Travel to conferences and customer meetings to build relationships and close business Who You Are Required Experience 5–10 years in B2B sales, with at least 3 years selling infrastructure, cloud compute, or developer tools to technical buyers Proven track record of sales and business development excellence, exceeding quota and building pipeline in early-stage or high-growth environments Strong existing network in target verticals (fintech, legal tech, insurance, AI/ML infrastructure, robotics, or cybersecurity) Technical fluency: ability to understand and articulate TEEs, confidential computing, AI inference, and competitive solutions (AWS Nitro, Azure Confidential Computing) Experience using modern sales tools (Attio/HubSpot/Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, or similar) What Makes You Stand Out Experience selling into CISOs, CTOs, VPs of Engineering, or compliance officers at 50–500 person companies Comfortable running technical workshops and discussing ML workloads, attestation, and privacy guarantees Scrappy and founder-mode: you build processes rather than wait for them Thrives in ambiguity and can shift between cold calling, demos, pilots, and conferences in the same week Credibility or relationships in privacy-focused tech communities, AI infrastructure circles, or ... (truncated, view full listing at source)