<h1><strong>Founding Account Executive, AI Talent Placement</strong></h1> <p>Pursuit | New York City | Full-time | $170,000 base, $275,000–$300,000 OTE</p> <p>You will be the first commercial hire at Pursuit, and you'll carry a personal number and close deals yourself. "Founding" refers to the commercial function you're building, not the organization (Pursuit is twelve years old).</p> <h2><strong>About Pursuit</strong></h2> <p>Pursuit is a social impact organization building economic mobility in the age of AI. For over a decade we've moved adults from low-income backgrounds, most without college degrees, into high-growth tech careers. Our graduates have generated nearly $1 billion in lifetime wage gains. We also pioneered the Pursuit Bond, an outcomes-based financing model that ties our revenue to the long-term earnings of the people we train.</p> <p>We train what we call Builders: people who complete seven months of immersive training in applied AI — workflow automation, prompt engineering, data pipelines and labeling, junior technical development — and who deliver business value early.</p> <h2><strong>About the role</strong></h2> <p>Reporting at first directly to the CEO, Pursuit is seeking an entrepreneurial, hands-on Founding Account Executive for our AI Talent Placement team to manage and land placements of Pursuit’s AI Trained builders into full-time roles at a wide range of employer accounts.</p> <p>Your pipeline of ~200 comes from Pursuit’s long-established employer relationships and network. Introductions and first discovery calls land with you, and you own them from that point: qualifying, structuring, closing, and driving the Builder match through to a signed hire. </p> <p>The placement motion is still evolving, so you'll also be expected to learn quickly from the market and rapidly iterate to test and improve the approach over time. </p> <p>As a founding director of sales, you'll have the opportunity to help build from scratch our commercial infrastructure for landing AI-native business roles and help us achieve scale over the next 18 months. </p> <h2><strong>What you'll do</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Own warm executive introductions end to end, from first conversation through a Builder starting work.</li> <li>Run consultative discovery to understand a company's business priorities, team gaps, and hiring constraints — including the needs they haven't articulated.</li> <li>Translate Pursuit talent capabilities into concrete roles, use cases, and business outcomes tailored to each employer- especially when the opportunity is not immediately obvious.</li> <li>Design the commercial structure for each opportunity. Direct hire, multi-hire cohort, paid apprenticeship or more. Judge what will actually close with this buyer and build it.</li> <li>Follow up consistently and creatively to keep opportunities moving, navigate objections, and maintain momentum through long or ambiguous sales cycles.</li> <li>Maintain disciplined pipeline tracking, outreach activity, next steps, and employer records across internal systems.</li> <li>Share patterns and feedback from employer conversations with the team to continuously improve messaging, targeting, and the placement motion.</li> <li>Use AI tools to improve prospecting, account research, personalization, follow-up, workflow automation, and relationship management.</li> <li>Build and run the funnel. Define stages and qualification criteria, keep next steps dated, and hold a forecast you'd stand behind in a weekly review.</li> <li>Use AI as a force multiplier across research, personalization, follow-up, and account management.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>About you</strong></h2> <ul> <li>5+ years closing B2B business — sales, business development, strategic partnerships, staffing and recruiting, or professional services.</li> <li>A track record against a number: quota, placement targets, revenue goals, or comparable measurable outcomes.</li> <li>Comfortable with an offering that changes shape per account. You've sold something where the answer to "what exactly am I buying" had to be built during the conversation.</li> <li>Strong discovery skills with the ability to uncover and shape real business and hiring needs rather than defaulting to a standard pitch.</li> <li>You've owned a full cycle or led complex partnership conversations from first contact through close.</li> <li>Pipeline discipline as a habit, not a chore. You can explain your conversion rates by stage and know where your deals actually die.</li> <li>You can translate capability into business value for very different buyers. Experience selling talent, staffing, recruiting, services, or marketplaces is a plus.</li> <li>Experience owning a full sales cycle or leading complex partnership conversations from initial outreach through successful close.</li> <li>High tolerance for ambiguity and a bias toward testing rather than waiting for a defined strategy.</li> <li>Executive presence across engineering, product, operations, and talent leadership.</li> <li>Committed to expanding economic opportunity and to Pursuit's mission.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>You might be a great fit if</strong></h2> <ul> <li>You've opened a new territory, launched a new motion, or helped build a market - and personally did the outreach, discovery, and follow-through required to make it work.</li> <li>You've closed businesses where the offer had to be