Founding Account Executive (Full-Cycle)*

Starboard | New York, NY (Hybrid)

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About Starboard

Starboard is building the AI-native operating system for global trade. Our flagship product is an autonomous AI quoting agent for freight forwarders that handles approximately 80% of customer quotes without human involvement, returning priced offers in under 30 seconds across 150+ airline integrations. We sell to mid-market freight forwarders (20–200 employees) across North America, Europe, and Asia.

The company is seed-stage and backed by Eclipse Ventures and Garuda Ventures. Our headquarters is in Toronto, Canada, with a growing commercial presence in New York. We are scaling through a validated go-to-market motion that pairs conference-led top-of-funnel with outbound and inbound sales, and have recently launched at industry events including GLA Cape Town, JCtrans Bangkok, and TPM Long Beach.

The Opportunity

We are hiring our Founding Account Executive — a full-cycle commercial role based in New York City. This is a career-defining step-up role for a top-performing mid-market SDR who is either newly promoted to AE or ready to make that transition now.

You will own every stage of the sales cycle, from outbound prospecting through signed contract. You will inherit a validated two-meeting sales motion with a 58% qualified-demo-to-paid conversion rate and an average deal size of approximately $18,000. The outbound muscle you have built as a mid-market SDR is exactly the muscle that drives this role — the difference is that you now also run discovery, demo, negotiation, and close on the same accounts you source.

You will report directly to the Chief Executive Officer until a VP of Sales is hired post-Series A, at which point you will transition under that leader.

Who This Role Is For

This role is designed for one of two profiles:

— A top-performing mid-market SDR or BDR (consistently top decile in their cohort) who has overachieved on pipeline generation and is ready to step up to closing.

— A recently-promoted Account Executive (0–18 months of closing experience) who came up through an SDR role and is hungry for founding-level ownership at a venture-backed startup.

This role is not designed for:

— Senior AEs with 4+ years of closing experience seeking a lateral move.

— Sellers who want pre-qualified pipeline handed to them.

— Career-SDRs who do not want to learn the closing side of the cycle.

Key Responsibilities — Full-Cycle Ownership

You will personally own each of the following stages of the sales cycle:

— Prospecting. Build and execute outbound campaigns to source your own pipeline through email, LinkedIn, phone, and in-person at industry conferences. The majority of your pipeline is yours to generate.

— Qualification. Run discovery calls to confirm fit against our ICP and identify decision-makers, budget, and timeline.

— Demonstration. Lead product demonstrations tailored to each prospect's freight operations.

— Negotiation. Manage commercial terms, security review, and procurement processes through to mutual agreement.

— Closing. Drive contracts to signature.

— Handoff. Transition signed accounts cleanly to the Director of Implementation. This role does not own post-sale go-live, customer success, or renewals.

In addition, you will:

— Carry an annual new ARR quota of approximately $600,000 in Year 1, with a structured 6-month ramp.

— Partner with the New York-based Sales Development Representative and the broader Toronto-based SDR pod for incremental pipeline support — supplemental to, not a substitute for, your own outbound work.

— Represent Starboard at industry conferences and customer events, with occasional domestic and international travel.

— Provide structured feedback to the product and marketing organizations on ICP refinement, competitive intelligence, and feature gaps observed in the field.

— Maintain accurate forecast hygiene and pipeline discipline in the company CRM.

Required Qualifications

— 1–4 years of B2B SaaS sales experience.

— At least 12 months as a Sales Development Representative or Business Development Representative selling into mid-market accounts.

— Documented top-quartile performance against pipeline-generation or quota targets in your current or most recent seat.

— Comfort with high-volume, high-quality outbound activity across email, LinkedIn, phone, and in-person channels.

— Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

— Authorization to work in the United States.

Preferred Qualifications

— 6–18 months of full-cycle or closing experience as an Account Executive.

— Direct experience selling into freight forwarding, logistics, supply chain, or adjacent vertical software markets.

— Prior experience at a Seed- or Series A-stage startup.

— Familiarity with modern sales tooling (e.g., Apollo, Outreach, HubSpot, or comparable platforms).

— Existing network within the freight forwarding or logistics technology community.

Compensation and Benefits

— Base salary: $80,000–$120,000 USD

— On-target earnings: $160,000–$240,000 USD (50% base / 50% variable)

— Uncapped commission structure with accelerators above quota

— Founding equity grant, vesting over four years with a one-year cliff

— Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits

— Paid time off and standard United States holidays

Reporting Structure

This role reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer until a VP of Sales is hired. The Founding Account Executive will work alongside the New York-based Sales Development Representative and partner with the Director of Implementation, Head of Product, and Head of Engineering as needed.

Application Process

Interested candidates should submit a brief note of interest along with their most recent pipeline or quota attainment record to Sumeet Trehan via LinkedIn message.

Starboard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.

About Starboard

Starboard is building the default agentic OS for global trade. We write software to help freight forwarders. If you don’t know what a freight forwarder is – no worries, we will teach you! In short, they are responsible for logistics of moving physical things across the planet. It's an underserved market, ripe for disruption with AI. Our software ingests complex rate sheets (pricing for moving shipping containers, air cargo, trucking) and uses agentic and deterministic programming to accurately store these rates in a structured database. Our software then helps the forwarders quote rapidly. We have agents that operate directly from the freight forwarders email inbox, and a web-app. Our stack is PostgreSQL & PostGIS, (frontend), Python (backend, agents), Golang (API).

Our vision is to build the automated global marketplace for freight. We’re expanding our core systems to support massive scale: many autonomous agents operating safely, deterministically, and in real time across global logistics workflows. If you want to build foundational systems, not just features, this is the role for you.

We’ve raised over $5.5M from top investors in SF and Toronto including Eclipse Capital, Garuda Ventures, OTPP and Everywhere Ventures and are HQ’d in Toronto and NY.

The Role

We’re looking for a Full Stack Engineer with a backend/platform bias to help design and build Starboard’s core infrastructure.

We need you to jump in with both feet and this is a startup, and the job description won’t always match the job. You’ll sit at the intersection of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and AI-enabled platforms, owning the systems that serve as the source of truth for our agents. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role working closely with the founding team and AI engineers.

We value speed over syntax. We practice high level architecture and agent based coding. You’ll be able to use Claude, Codex, Copilot on the job and in the interview, and will be judged on the system you design, not how you program it.

In this role you will:

• Build and operate Starboard’s core platform and cloud infrastructure powering real-time, agent-driven trade workflows.

• Design and own high-scale CRUD systems and APIs for rates, quotes, shipments, customers, and marketplace data.

• Build event-driven systems and deterministic interfaces that allow autonomous agents to read/write state safely and reliably.

• Architect for performance, reliability, and observability (milliseconds matter).

• Partner closely with AI engineers and founders to translate complex logistics workflows into clean system models.

• Take end-to-end ownership of foundational systems and raise the technical bar as the team scales.

Why You Should Join Us

• Build the foundational AI infrastructure for one of the largest critical industries in the world ($2T+ global trade).

• Work directly with deeply invested founders and a lightning-fast engineering culture.

• Ship products that immediately touch real revenue with global customers.

• Solve unstructured, messy real-world problems at massive scale.

• Competitive compensation and equity ownership in a company redefining how global trade operates.
  

Qualifications

• Experience in backend, platform, or infrastructure engineering

• Strong experience with TypeScript/Node, Python, Go, or similar

• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure, containers, and orchestration

• Experience designing and operating high-scale CRUD systems

• Hands-on experience with event-driven or distributed systems

• Strong data modeling instincts - you can move fast without breaking integrity

• High ownership mindset; comfortable operating in ambiguity

• Curious, pragmatic, and impact-driven - you go where the leverage is

Nice to Haves:

• Experience in B2B SaaS logistics, marketplaces, fintech, or other complex domains

• Exposure to agent frameworks, LLM-driven systems, or AI infrastructure

• Experience optimizing performance-sensitive or compute-heavy workloads

• Early-stage startup experience is an asset

Benefits

• Compensation: $180,000 - $240,000, 0.25-0.75% equity

• Daily paid lunches in office

• Company provided laptop and equipment

About Starboard

Starboard is building the default agentic OS for global trade. We’re used by freight forwarders around the world to quote faster, procure smarter, and operate with AI-level efficiency. Today, our platform reads unstructured rate sheets, interprets customer emails, automates sourcing, generates quotes, and connects forwarders to a powerful digital procurement network to help them get the best rates in a fraction of the time. Our vision is to build the automated global marketplace for freight.

We’ve raised over $5.5M from top investors including Eclipse Capital, Garuda Ventures, OTPP and Everywhere Ventures and are HQ’d in Toronto and NY.

We’re scaling rapidly across the North American market, and this role directly drives that growth by owning pipeline creation..

The Role

We’re looking for a Business Development Representative to own the top of the funnel and SMB revenue for Starboard across North America.

You will be Starboard’s first line of attack in the market: prospecting, qualifying, and booking calls with SMB freight forwarders. This is a full-stack BDR role with the opportunity to grow quickly into an AE role, not just an appointment-setting position.

In this role you will:

• Own top-of-funnel generation across target geos in US and Canada through disciplined outbound and fast inbound qualification.

• Build and maintain a predictable pipeline engine targeting SMB and mid-market freight forwarders.

• Develop deep market understanding across North American regions and surface competitive insights.

• Execute with rigor: clean CRM hygiene, fast response times, and continuous playbook improvement.

Why you should join us:

• You will own real revenue opportunities from day one and have an opportunity to build a pipeline in a massive, underserved $2T+ global trade market.

• Work directly with founders in a high-accountability, high-velocity culture.

• Build pipeline in a massive, underserved $2T+ global trade market.

• Clear growth path from BDR to AE role.

• Competitive base, uncapped commission, and meaningful equity.

Qualifications

• 1-3+ years experience in a SaaS sales or BDR role (SaaS, logistics, or marketplaces preferred).

• Proven strength in outbound prospecting with disciplined, resilient, and creative approach to finding and qualifying leads.

• Strong communication skills and natural commercial instincts.

• A builder mindset. You want to shape the motion, not just follow scripts.

• High urgency and ownership. You thrive where speed > bureaucracy.

Nice to Haves

• Experience selling to freight forwarders or supply-chain teams.

• Experience selling AI SaaS or agent-assisted products.

• Experience running short, high-velocity sales cycles (30-45 days).

• Early-stage startup experience is an asset.

Benefits

• Competitive salary, equity and benefits based on location: $120,000 - $140,000 OTE with uncapped commission; 0.15% equity

• Daily paid lunches in office

• Company provided laptop and equipment