Head of Pre-Sales

Job description

About 9fin 9fin is the AI platform powering global debt markets — the world’s largest asset class at over $145 trillion. Debt markets are vast, global, and mission-critical, yet still run on fragmented data, PDFs, and manual workflows. 9fin replaces this broken infrastructure with a single platform that centralises proprietary credit data, deep analysis, and high-value workflows across global markets. Today, 9fin powers teams at 300+ blue-chip institutions worldwide, including global banks, asset managers, private equity firms, law firms, and advisors. The business is scaling at exceptional speed, with rapid expansion in the US and best-in-class retention driven by deep workflow adoption. We’re at a defining inflection point. With proven product-market fit and strong, global market pull, 9fin is accelerating toward becoming the category-defining platform for debt markets worldwide. WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS The API motion is fundamentally different to the platform motion. APIs and Private 9fin require credibility with CTOs, CIOs, Quant Desks, Data, Research, Compliance and Technology Leaders. With the launch of these two new institutional products, we want to create a function to support technical validation to ensure that we launch and scale quickly. This added complexity in how we sell also demands stronger sales enablement and a more robust go-to-market layer. This role is the single point of accountability for all three: improving the API motion, sharpening our Private 9fin product motion, and unlocking enterprise-scale deals where the customer relationship spans both front office workflows and back end system of record integration. In the first six months you will operate as a player/coach, personally leading discovery, technical validation and solution design on the first 10–20 API opportunities. You will help our sales leaders re-develop a best in class onboarding experience for our prospective and current clients across our new products. From month six, as pipeline scales, you will build and coach the API Product Specialist team in the US and EU, and shape the dedicated onboarding function for scalability. This role will partner directly with our newly created Customer Partnerships role - something we haven’t announced publicly yet, but interviewees will get to find out how. WHAT YOU’LL OWN This is a build role. 9fin’s platform business is category defining; our Data Feed Products are a new revenue line, and the Head of Pre-Sales owns the technical sales motion behind them. What the function becomes, how it sells, who it hires, the standards it operates to is yours to design. You will start as a player-coach. You define what a high quality API deal looks like at 9fin: how we qualify, how we run technical validation, how we navigate procurement, how we land and expand. You will be evaluated on how many of those deals you close and how quickly we can repeat the motion without you in the room. As pipeline converts, you move from IC to leader. You hire the Product Specialists who will carry the motion in the US and EU, bring on a dedicated Sales Enablement Manager to industrialise what you’ve built, and shape the Private 9fin onboarding function. You own the operating cadence of the pre-sales org and you are the person Sales leadership trusts to call deal risk early. This is where your playbook becomes the team’s playbook. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Partner with EMEA and US Sales as the technical owner on every Data Feed Products opportunity, from first technical conversation to signed contract and go-live handover. - Run technical discovery with CTOs, Heads of Data, Quants and Engineering Leaders. Map the buyer’s stack, data flows, latency tolerance, licensing model and integration constraints. - Design and run technical validation – sandbox access, sample pulls, notebook walkthroughs, PoC plans and integration timelines and create a scalable process to close validation in weeks, not months. - Facilitate architecture conversations across the technical stack we sell into: REST, streaming (WebSocket, Kafka), bulk file (S3, SFTP), Snowflake / data share, AWS PrivateLink, authentication(OAuth2, mTLS, API keys), rate limits, schema versioning, entitlements. - Share ownership of the InfoSec, procurement and vendor onboarding work stream and pre-empt the questions Tier 1 buyers will ask. - Codify the technical validation playbook; use case library, reference architectures, sample notebooks, RFI/RFP response templates, objection handling – so the motion is scalable and repeatable. - Hire, onboard and coach the founding Product Specialist team (US and EU), the Sales Enablement Manager and Client Onboarding & Implementation Managers. Set the bar for what good looks like. - Run the closed loop with Product and Engineering. Field objections, schema gaps and integration friction land with the roadmap clearly enough that the next release closes them. - Define and own the operating cadence – deal desk, win/loss review, pipeline coverage, ICP refresh – feeding into the sales leadership. WHO YOU ARE MUST-HAVES - 10+ years in technical sales, with at least 3+ years leading or building a pre-sales, solutions engineering or technical account team selling to financial institutions. - Shipped revenue against an API or data product sold into banks and/or buy-side firms. You have personally closed deals where the buyer was a CTO, head of data, quant lead or technology leader. - Have run vendor selection procurement processes end-to-end at Tier 1 banks and/or large buy-side firms. - Credible in a room with buy-side and sell-side. You don’t need a crash course on what the buyer does. - Player coach instinct. Comfortable owning live deals personally in month one and coaching a team against your own playbook in month nine. - Data-driven operator – you run your function on win/loss, cycle time and ICP evidence rather than anecdote. STRONGLY PREFERRED - Experience at a modern capital markets technology or financial data vendor for selling data products into capital markets. - Built a pre-sales function from scratch in a growth-stage company rather than inherited one at scale. - Familiarity with the credit asset class – leveraged finance, high-yield, private credit, distressed, and the data pain points those teams have. - Fluent in how data and quant teams actually consume APIs today. Parquet, DuckDB, Polars, Snowflake shares, not just pandas in a Jupyter notebook. You can rip through a notebook live on a call. - Exposure to MEDDPICC / MEDDICC. NICE TO HAVE - Prior IC background in a technical sales or product role before moving into pre-sales. - Deep fluency in the technical architecture of financial data delivery: REST, streaming (WebSocket, Kafka), bulk file (S3, SFTP), Snowflake / data share, private cloud delivery (AWS PrivateLink). You can whiteboard an integration with a quant team without reaching for an engineer - Experience running dual-attribution comp models across Sales and specialist pre-sales teams without creating friction. OUR BENEFITS We’re a scaling start up and we enjoy sharing our success, when the company succeeds, we always reinvest that in our people. We also offer huge amounts of responsibility, an abundance of opportunity for growth and a platform to truly excel. Financial & Insurance - Competitive salary benchmarked at 75-90th% of market - Pension (your minimum contributions are 4% with 9fin matching up to 7%) - Private Medical Insurance - Paid sick leave with Income Protection for long periods of illness - Group Life Assurance - Season Ticket Loan & Cycle to Work schemes Time off - 25 holiday days per year - Local public holidays (with the ability to exchange them for alternative days) - Hybrid working model, to allow you the flexibility to decide how, where and when you do your best work - Work abroad for up to 3 months a year - 1 month paid sabbatical after 5 years of service - Enhanced parental leave & flexible working arrangements available Training & Culture - Professional learning and development budget - AI experimentation budget of £800 (UK) per employee to trial AI tools - Quarterly team socials - Summer and Winter company social events 9fin is an equal opportunities employer At 9fin we are dedicated to building and promoting a fair and inclusive workplace where everyone can reach their full potential and truly belong. We recognize that building diverse teams enables a more creative and productive environment. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t perfectly align with the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might just be who we’re looking for — either for this role, or perhaps another.