Founding Account Executive — Sphinx Labs

Founding Account Executive — Sphinx Labs

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 days/week — paid relocation + one month temporary housing provided)
Compensation: $150,000 – $200,000 base | $300,000 OTE + competitive equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available
Experience Level: 3–5+ years
Employment Type: Full-Time

About Sphinx Labs

Sphinx Labs builds AI compliance analysts that automate AML, KYC, KYB, and transaction monitoring across banks and fintechs. The product helps institutions eliminate up to 90% of manual compliance work, reduce costs 4x, and dramatically accelerate onboarding. Trusted by financial institutions across the US, Canada, Europe, and LatAm — with seven-figure bank contracts already closed and an undefeated competitive win rate in live deals. Seed-stage fintech AI company founded in 2024.

About the Role

This is the first true sales hire. Founder-led sales has proven product-market fit — now it's time to scale. This is a builder role with full ownership over enterprise pipeline creation, closing, sales process design, compensation structures, and future team building. You will work in direct partnership with the CEO to architect the revenue engine from zero.

What You'll Own

• Own full enterprise sales cycle from cold outreach through close
• Prospect and close banks, fintechs, and MSBs
• Run discovery, demos, negotiations, procurement, and contracting
• Build pipeline from zero through outbound prospecting
• Design sales playbook and GTM process
• Help hire future AEs and shape compensation structures
• Define pricing, packaging, territories, and competitive positioning
• Act as voice of customer to product and GTM teams
• Build repeatable enterprise revenue engine

Requirements

• 3–5+ years of enterprise sales experience
• Proven $100K–$1M+ contract closing experience
• Financial services, fintech, or bank sales background
• Full-cycle hunter mentality
• Comfortable with procurement, legal, and enterprise buying committees
• Strong in-person executive presence and cold outbound confidence
• Builder mindset — this is not a playbook execution role
• SF onsite or willing to relocate (paid relocation + temporary housing provided)

Target Backgrounds

Strong signals include compliance tech AE backgrounds, KYC/AML/KYB/financial crime infrastructure sales, existing bank or compliance consultancy relationships (AML RightSource, Guidehouse, Protiviti, or similar), Series A/B startup sales buildout experience, proven self-sourced enterprise pipeline, and Ramp/Brex-caliber commercial profiles. Tool fluency: Apollo, Outreach, Salesforce, Gong, Clay.

This Role Is NOT For

• Horizontal SaaS enterprise sellers without financial services domain knowledge
• Small ACV backgrounds
• Sales profiles dependent on SDR/BDR teams
• Process executors rather than builders
• Weak outbound hunter mentality

Benefits

• Paid relocation and one month temporary housing
• Comprehensive healthcare
• Unlimited PTO
• Annual offsite
• Lunch, dinner, and office snacks
• Latest technology setup

Interview Process

1. Pending approval
2. Initial screen
3. First round
4. Second round
5. Offer

Logistics

• Role is fully onsite in San Francisco — 5 days/week — please only apply if you can commit to this
• Paid relocation and one month temporary housing available
• No visa sponsorship available

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Sphinx Labs.