Deal Desk Lead

Job description

Profound is the marketing platform for the age of AI search. The way brands reach people is being rewritten — AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode are now the answer layer between companies and their customers. We built the platform marketers use to understand, measure, and win in that world: the analytics, intelligence, and agent automation that turn AI search from a threat into a competitive advantage. We went from 0 to a $1B valuation in 18 months. Revenue grew 100x last year. Our customers include 15% of the Fortune 500 like Walmart, Wayfair and U.S. Bank, and innovators like Ramp, MongoDB, and Figma. We are backed by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, LSVP, and Khosla Ventures — and we are moving fast enough that the people joining now are building the playbook everyone who comes after them will run. As our first Deal Desk hire, you won't be stepping into an existing machine - you'll be the one who builds it. This is a foundational, high-ownership seat for someone who has done this before, thrives without a blueprint, and is ready to step into something bigger. THE ROLE You'll own the entire deal lifecycle that powers our revenue engine - partnering with Sales and RevOps to fine tune the systems, guardrails, and playbooks that let us scale without losing commercial discipline. You'll be the last line of defense before every deal goes out the door and the first call a rep makes when a deal gets complicated. But this isn't just an execution role. Profound is an AI-native company, and we expect this function to be AI-native too. We're looking for someone who has already built AI solutions to automate meaningful parts of their work - not just someone who uses the tools, but someone who engineers with them. That mindset will define how you build this function. WHAT YOU'LL DO Be the deal expert reps actually want to call - Serve as the trusted advisor to AEs on deal structure, pricing, and commercial terms - bringing judgment to non-standard situations, not just policy lookups - Partner with Sales on new business, expansion, and renewal deals that balance customer needs, Profound's economics, and operational simplicity - Establish yourself as the connective tissue between Sales, Finance, and Legal throughout the deal cycle Own quote-to-sign end-to-end - Validate pricing and structure, generate and QA order forms, coordinate signature workflows, and resolve issues fast - Conduct final review of every deal prior to execution - you're the quality control gate before signature - Maintain Salesforce hygiene for all deal and opportunity records - pricing, terms, approval status, contract details - and partner with RevOps to automate workflows across CRM, CPQ, and CLM Build the function from zero - Design and implement approval workflows, escalation paths, SLA standards, and exception-handling frameworks - Develop and maintain pricing guidelines, discount approval matrices, and deal structuring playbooks; enforce them consistently while refining as the business evolves - Establish the operating cadence for deal review, including regular deal clinics with Sales and Finance leadership - Own deal desk metrics - cycle time, approval turnaround, exception rates, discounting trends, deal quality - and report on them with rigor - Lead month-end deal audits to support accurate reporting and revenue recognition Build AI into everything you do - Identify the highest-leverage opportunities for AI to reduce manual overhead and increase deal velocity - Bring a builder's mindset: if you're doing something repetitive more than twice, you should be building a solution Own commercial responses - Support the commercial and pricing sections of RFP/RFI responses WHO YOU ARE Experience - 5–8 years in Deal Desk, Revenue Operations, or Sales Operations at a high-growth B2B SaaS company - Hands-on experience supporting enterprise sales cycles - multi-stakeholder, multi-year, non-standard structures - Proven track record meaningfully improving or standing up deal desk processes (not just inheriting them) - Working knowledge of Salesforce (or HubSpot), CPQ, and CLM platforms Mindset and character - An AI builder, not just an AI user - you've built automations that eliminated manual work from your deal desk workflow; you can speak to what you built, how, and what it replaced - Strong commercial intuition: you understand SaaS economics, discounting, and standard commercial terms, and you spot edge cases before they become problems - The backbone to push back constructively on senior Sales stakeholders when a deal falls outside policy - paired with genuine empathy for reps and a service mindset - Obsessively detail-oriented, able to prioritize and move fast in a high-volume environment - A clear communicator who can translate commercial complexity into actionable guidance for Sales, Finance, and Legal - Comfortable balancing 0-to-1 process building with high-volume deal execution simultaneously - Proactive by default - you identify gaps and close them without being asked Nice to have - Experience with usage-based or consumption pricing models - Working knowledge of ASC 606 and its deal structuring implications - Experience evaluating or rolling out a CLM platform (Ironclad, Juro, DocuSign CLM, or similar) WHAT MAKES THIS ROLE DIFFERENT Most deal desk roles ask you to maintain a machine someone else built. This one asks you to design the machine, wire it up, and run it - at an AI-native company that expects you to use AI to do it better than it's ever been done before. You'll have direct access to Sales, Finance, and Legal leadership. Your decisions will shape how Profound closes deals and how the company scales its commercial operations. If you've been waiting for a seat at the table, this is it. LOCATION On-site in our NYC or San Francisco office. COMPENSATION Base salary: $150,000 – $190,000 Total compensation includes base salary, meaningful equity, and a full benefits package. Final comp will depend on your skills, experience, qualifications, and location, and will be determined through the interview process. Note: All official communication from Profound will come from a @tryprofound.com email address. If you're contacted by anyone using a different domain, please disregard and report it as spam.