Account Executive (San Francisco)

About the Role 

Appen's Go to Market team sits at the center of the company's growth strategy, partnering with the world's most ambitious AI programs to deliver the data that makes models work. This role will focus on developing new business with strategic customers across Big Tech, AI Labs, and Enterprise AI adopters. 

This is a high-visibility commercial role for a business development professional who understands the AI industry and can identify opportunities, build relationships, and turn customer needs into strategic partnerships. 

Location and Work Arrangement 

This role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. You'll be expected to meet clients in person and be comfortable building relationships through regular face-to-face meetings. 

Your Impact 

You'll own end-to-end sales cycles with both research-led AI labs and enterprise buyers, from discovery and qualification through commercial negotiation and contract execution, working from well-developed territory and account plans. 

You'll stay multi-threaded across research, buying, technical, and operational stakeholders, positioning Appen's portfolio as the partner of choice by mapping capabilities directly to each client's AI program priorities. Expect to craft compelling business cases and proposals, and to run regular Executive Business Reviews to keep clients aligned on strategic goals and surface new partnership opportunities. 

Pipeline comes from outbound account-based strategies run in partnership with Marketing, backed by strong CRM discipline and accurate, timely forecasts. You'll also orchestrate internal teams across Client Partners, Delivery, Legal, and Finance to shape the solution and pricing behind each bid. 

Success in this role looks like year-on-year growth in the accounts you own, and enough standing inside them to influence how those programs are scoped and resourced. 

What You Bring 

• 5+ years of sales experience with a business development background
• A proven track record of building pipeline and closing large, complex deals with both research-led organizations and traditional enterprises
• Demonstrated success consistently achieving or exceeding quota in new business roles
• Working knowledge of the AI industry, including how models are trained and evaluated, the key players, and the role data plays
• Experience selling technical solutions to research, engineering, and executive audiences
• Strong ability to lead complex RFP responses and negotiate MSAs, SOWs, DPAs, and other enterprise agreements
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with comfort presenting to executive audiences
• A consultative, customer-first mindset with the ability to influence cross-functional internal teams
• Comfort building relationships face to face through regular in-person client meetings across the Bay Area
• Experience in AI training data, RLHF, or model evaluation highly valued 

Why You'll Love Working Here

At Appen, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We value curiosity, accountability, and a commitment to delivering the highest quality AI solutions for frontier models. You'll work on complex challenges that shape the future of AI across industries and geographies, alongside talented people in a culture that values humility over ego. You'll have the flexibility to deliver in a way that works for you and your team, supported by tools, resources, and development opportunities to continue to build your capability over time.

About Appen

Appen has been a leader in AI training data for over 30 years. We specialise in human generated data to train, fine tune, and evaluate models across generative AI, large language models, computer vision, and speech recognition. Our AI assisted data annotation platform and global crowd of more than 1 million contributors in over 200 countries support model pre training, supervised fine tuning, evaluation and benchmarking, safety and red teaming, and multilingual global expansion.