Founding Account Executive

Job description

FOUNDING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Location: San Francisco Reports To: VP of Revenue OTE: $250,000 - $300,000 ABOUT RIME Rime builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our text-to-speech models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the pronunciation accuracy, latency, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand. We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: voice AI isn't bottlenecked by model architecture. It's bottlenecked by data. So before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech, recorded and annotated by PhD linguists. That's our moat. It's also why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to convert into production. We're backed by top-tier investors including Unusual Ventures, and we've built a team at the intersection of product, research, and craft. Building voice models is an art. We intend to master it. ROLE OVERVIEW Our revenue team has a unique mission to help customers understand the deep impact that highly capable AI voice models can bring to their business and users. This Founding Account Executive role is a mixture of technical understanding, vision, partnership, and value-driven strategy. You’ll be a key driver of opportunities through the entire sales cycle, from prospecting and deal execution to long-term account growth. You’ll work with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help customers evolve their industry with AI. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in early-stage environments, loves building from zero, and is excited to help define how Rime’s voice AI technology is deployed across industries. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Own the full sales cycle — from cold outbound to signed contract. You find your way to the right buyers, earn their trust, and close. - Generate your own pipeline. You're a hunter who builds from zero — outbound, events, partner channels, whatever works. - Become a product expert. Run technical discovery, demo credibly to engineering and product teams, and translate capability into a clear business case. - Serve as a trusted advisor. Deeply understand your customers' priorities and help them deploy voice AI in ways that actually move their business forward. - Inform the roadmap. Synthesize market signals, customer feedback, and competitive intel — what you learn in the field shapes what we build. - Drive expansion. The initial contract is the floor. You build relationships that grow accounts over time. WHO YOU ARE - A genuine hunter. You create your own pipeline, move deals forward with urgency, and don't wait to be told what to do next. - Technically fluent. You understand APIs, AI pipelines, and developer workflows — not as a talking point, but because you're genuinely curious. - Customer-obsessed. You care about outcomes, not just signatures, and you build relationships that last beyond the close. - Energized by hard problems. Bespoke deals, new verticals, and undefined playbooks don't intimidate you — they motivate you. - A sharp communicator. You write clearly, present with confidence, and adapt from a platform engineer to a C-suite exec. WHY JOIN RIME - Rime is an AI lab — you're not just selling software, you're working alongside the researchers and engineers building frontier voice models. - Voice AI is at an inflection point. The companies that win now will define the category — and you'll be one of the first commercial leaders helping shape that. - Direct exposure to how frontier AI gets built and deployed at scale, across some of the most demanding industries in the world. - Competitive compensation with meaningful equity and real performance upside — we want to build a small, high-performing team that has real ownership. AT RIME, WE... - Are outliers - Cut through the hype to focus on the craft - Move fast with agency and freedom - Maintain a growth mindset, finding joy in the struggle - Do the right things, knowing that it'll lead to making money If that sounds like you too, you'll be a great fit for Rime!