Founding Account Executive

The posting, as Scalar wrote it

About Scalar

Building on a great API is one of the best feelings in software — every interface you want is right there, and it all just works. Building on a bad one is the opposite: out-of-date docs, no SDK in your language, no MCP server. We started Scalar to fix that.

We're a small team (around ten engineers and designers) who wear a lot of hats and obsess over our craft. We think every company deserves Stripe-level docs, SDKs, and MCP servers from day zero — not just the ones with a platform team to build them. Open-source is in our DNA: our whole team contributes to and maintains repositories across the API ecosystem, including the standards everyone relies on, like OpenAPI.

We keep things lean and move without layers of process — engineers pick up problems, talk to each other, and ship. We're looking for owners with high agency: people who see what needs doing and do it. If you do your best work with a lot of autonomy and very little ego, you'll feel at home here.

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RIGHT NOW, EVERY DEAL AT SCALAR CLOSES BECAUSE MARC, OUR CEO, PERSONALLY CLOSED IT. HE FINDS THE ACCOUNT, WRITES THE FIRST EMAIL, RUNS THE CALL, GOES DEEP ON THE TECHNICAL EVALUATION, NEGOTIATES THE CONTRACT, AND ONBOARDS THE TEAM. THAT'S FOUNDER-LED SALES END TO END, AND IT'S WORKED — IT'S HOW WE GOT ZOOM, CLERK, WARP, AND PROFOUND.

It also doesn't scale, which is why this role exists.

You'll be our first Account Executive and the first person other than the founder to own a deal from first call to signature. You're joining a sales team being built right now: two SDRs at the front of the funnel, a founding Solutions Engineer on the technical side, and Marc, who has been doing all four jobs at once. You take the closing half off his plate.

Be clear-eyed about what that means. There is a motion here and it demonstrably works — but it is Marc's, it lives largely in his head, and it has never been run by anyone else. There is no playbook, no close plan template, no discovery framework, no competitive battlecard, no forecast anyone trusts. The first quarter of this job is learning how Marc sells by sitting next to him while he does it. The rest of it is turning that into something a fifth and tenth rep can run — and being the person who proves that a Scalar deal closes when the founder isn't in the room.

If you've been waiting for the job where you build how a company sells rather than execute how it already does, this is that job. If you want a territory, a quota, and a manager who tells you what good looks like, this is not.

WHO WE SELL TO

Our buyers are engineers, and the product is the proof. Zoom's developer documentation runs on Scalar. So does Clerk's — a company whose docs were already a competitive advantage, which makes them exactly the kind of customer with no reason to switch unless the thing is genuin
[…]
differently this time

• Comfort with technical evaluations — you've run POCs, you know what makes them stall, and you've killed one early rather than let it drift
• Fluency with the tooling — HubSpot, Apollo, Clay — and an instinct for automating your own busywork
• You've used API documentation in anger and have opinions about which ones are good
• You've sold against an incumbent that customers were merely tolerating, and know how differently that deal runs

WHERE WE WORK

In-office in San Francisco. Scalar is otherwise a remote team, and our engineering roles are remote — but we're building the sales team in person on purpose. You'll be in a room with Marc, our Solutions Engineer, and two SDRs, every day, in the year where we scale the sales organization.

That's the real offer here. Founder-led sales is learned by sitting next to the founder while he does it — hearing the call that goes sideways, watching which technical objection actually kills a deal, arguing about the pricing conversation on the walk back. None of that survives being written down or watched later in a recording. Expect meaningful in-person time with customers and prospects around the Bay Area too.

We offer flexible, unlimited time off. We believe prioritizing the team's well-being makes the work better and more meaningful.

OTHER NOTES

• This is the first AE seat, not the first sales seat. You're joining a team being assembled at the same time — two SDRs and a Solutions Engineer starting alongside you, and a founder who has closed every deal to date and wants to stop.
• This is a build role, not a seat. The person who does it well here should have a say in who joins the team after them and how it's run.
• We are a small team of ten and wear many hats. We expect everyone to pitch in and help out where needed.
• Compensation Range: $110,000–$140,000 (USD) base, for an on-target range of $220,000–$280,000 including variable, based on experience — plus meaningful early equity.