Regional Director, SLED

Job description

Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code. About the role As Regional Director, SLED at Cursor, you'll build and lead the team responsible for revenue growth across our state, local, and education (SLED) accounts within Public Sector. You'll hire, coach, and scale a team of Account Executives, set territory and account strategy, and personally engage in top strategic and executive-level relationships. You'll partner with engineering and IT leaders across state and local agencies, school districts, and higher education institutions — from CTOs to program leads — to show how Cursor transforms developer productivity, and drive land-and-expand motion at scale across the segment. This role requires deep technical fluency, command of complex public sector buying processes, and a genuine passion for AI-powered developer tools. You'll be a foundational leader in our enterprise sales organization. What you’ll do - Build, hire, and lead a high-performing team of SLED Account Executives; own forecasting, pipeline health, and quota attainment across the region. - Set and execute go-to-market strategy for a named territory of state agencies, local governments, and educational institutions, driving new logo acquisition, expansion revenue, and long-term strategic growth. - Personally engage in the largest, most strategic deals — leading complex, multi-threaded sales cycles across Engineering, IT, Security, Procurement, Legal, and mission-critical stakeholders. - Coach your team to become trusted product experts, guiding SLED prospects through trials, technical evaluations, security reviews, and large-scale rollouts. - Build executive relationships across state and local agencies, school systems, universities, and integrators, and represent Cursor at the CIO/CISO/superintendent/senior-executive level. - Establish clear ROI frameworks tied to developer productivity, AI adoption, mission outcomes, and secure software delivery, and ensure your team applies them consistently. - Serve as the voice of the SLED customer to leadership, shaping roadmap, compliance, deployment, and procurement strategy. - Partner closely with Field Engineering and the AI Deployment team to ensure outcomes from proof of concept through production deployment and expansion. - Navigate and build repeatable playbooks for state and local procurement processes, contract vehicles (e.g., NASPO, cooperative purchasing agreements), and partners to accelerate adoption across the region. You may be a fit if - You have 6+ years of SLED or enterprise technology sales experience, including 2+ years leading and scaling a quota-carrying sales team, ideally in developer tools, technical SaaS, infrastructure, cybersecurity, or emerging technologies. - You have a consistent track record of building and leading teams that land new logos, expand strategic accounts, and exceed quota. - You're a builder — you've stood up or scaled a territory/team from the ground up, with a bias for hands-on involvement in outbound prospecting, account mapping, and partner leverage. - You're comfortable navigating complex state, local, and education sales cycles and coaching others to sell to technical and mission-oriented stakeholders — from engineers and program leaders to CISOs, CIOs, superintendents, and senior executives. - You understand SLED buying motions, procurement processes, security expectations, and partner ecosystems (resellers, cooperative contracts, systems integrators), and can translate that knowledge into team strategy and enablement. - You bring an analytical approach to pipeline and forecasting, combined with the creative, tactical instincts to unblock deals and coach reps through them. - You're an excellent communicator and leader who builds trust across all levels of an organization — your team, customers, and executive stakeholders alike. - You're passionate about AI and excited by the idea that transforming how software gets written is one of the most important problems to work on right now.