Key Account Director, Aiven
Salary not provided
+ Commission structure and equity plan
AWS
GCP
Kafka
Postgres
Salesforce
Azure
Senior and Expert level
Austin
More information about location
AI-ready open source data platform
Be an early applicant
AI-ready open source data platform
201-500 employees
B2BData storageSaaSData IntegrationCloud Computing
Be an early applicant
Salary not provided
+ Commission structure and equity plan
AWS
GCP
Kafka
Postgres
Salesforce
Azure
Senior and Expert level
Austin
More information about location
201-500 employees
B2BData storageSaaSData IntegrationCloud Computing
Company mission
To help customers create outcomes and accelerate building applications.
Role
Who you are
- This role requires someone who can operate at executive altitude while maintaining deal-level precision
- You must be equally credible in a C-suite strategic review and a technical architecture discussion with a principal engineer
- You will build multi-year account plans, but you will also inspect individual expansion opportunities with MEDDPICC rigor
- Significant experience in B2B technology sales having managed strategic or named accounts of similar scale and complexity ($1M+ ARR per account, multi-stakeholder enterprise organizations)
- Proven track record of driving expansion revenue within existing accounts
- Experience managing accounts where you've navigated matrixed organizations with distributed decision-making
- Demonstrated success in consumption-based or usage-based revenue models where revenue scales with adoption
- Ability to build and maintain executive relationships at VP and C-level
- Experience multi-threading across buying centers: platform engineering, data engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, procurement, IT governance, and line-of-business technology teams
- Understanding of enterprise procurement, legal, and vendor management functions
- Track record of developing internal champions who advocate for expansion within their organizations
- Familiarity with open-source data infrastructure: Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, or similar technologies
- Understanding of cloud infrastructure and managed services: AWS, OCI, GCP, Azure ecosystem, and how customers make build-vs-buy decisions for data platform components
- Ability to translate technical capabilities into business outcomes: reduced operational overhead, faster time-to-production, infrastructure cost optimization, developer productivity, risk mitigation
- Experience selling into platform engineering, data engineering, and infrastructure organizations
- Direct experience engaging cloud provider field teams (AWS,OCI, GCP, Azure) as partners on strategic accounts
- Understanding of hyperscaler co-sell motions, marketplace dynamics, and partner programs
- If you have managed strategic accounts at this scale, understand how to navigate complex enterprise organizations, and can drive expansion in a consumption-based model without relying on contractual lock-in we want to hear from you
What the job involves
- As Key Account Director, North America, you will own the commercial relationship and revenue growth for Aiven's 6 largest and most strategically complex accounts in the region
- These accounts represent the highest-value customer relationships in North America and require a fundamentally different approach than velocity sales or standard enterprise account management
- This is a pure expansion role. You are not hunting new logos
- You are responsible for net new expansion ARR by deepening penetration within accounts that already trust Aiven with critical data infrastructure
- Your success will come from identifying new workloads, new business units, new use cases, and new stakeholders within organizations where we have proven value but untapped potential
- These accounts share common characteristics that define the role:
- Scale and complexity: Multi-thousand-person engineering organizations with distributed decision-making across business units, geographies, and technology domains
- Multiple stakeholders: No single buyer controls the relationship. You will navigate matrixed procurement, IT governance, platform teams, and line-of-business engineering leaders simultaneously
- Strategic growth vectors: Significant whitespace exists, new Aiven services (Kafka, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey), new cloud regions, new business units, new workloads migrating from self-managed or competitive platforms
- Hyperscaler interdependence: These accounts have deep relationships with AWS, GCP, OCI and Azure. Your ability to engage hyperscaler field teams as force multipliers, not competitors directly impacts expansion velocity
- Consumption-based economics: Revenue scales with usage. Your job is to drive adoption that compounds over time, not to negotiate larger upfront commits that sit unused
- There are clear success metrics:
- Net new expansion ARR annually, 100% gross retention of the base, 3.5x qualified pipeline coverage against expansion targets, and ±10% forecast accuracy at commit
- You will maintain executive sponsor relationships at VP+ level in each account and develop documented account plans with identified whitespace, competitive displacement opportunities, and 12-month expansion roadmaps
- What You'll Do
- Own Expansion Revenue Outcomes:
- Deliver net new expansion ARR annually across 6 named strategic accounts through new workloads, new services, new business units, and competitive displacement
- Protect and retain existing ARR with 100% gross retention
- Build and maintain 3.5x qualified pipeline coverage against expansion targets using rigorous MEDDPICC standards for every opportunity
- Achieve ±10% forecast accuracy at commit with evidence-based qualification
- Drive consumption growth through adoption initiatives that expand usage of contracted services
- Build & Execute Strategic Account Plans:
- Develop 12-month account plans for each of the 6 accounts with documented whitespace analysis, stakeholder maps, competitive positioning, and prioritized expansion plays
- Identify and qualify growth vectors: new Aiven services not yet deployed, new cloud regions, new business units, workloads on self-managed infrastructure, competitive displacement opportunities
- Map organizational structure and decision-making authority across platform engineering, data engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, and line-of-business technology teams
- Maintain living account intelligence: executive changes, organizational restructures, strategic initiatives, M&A activity, technology roadmap shifts that create expansion opportunities or retention risk
- Present quarterly business reviews internally with account health assessment, pipeline status, risk register, and resource requirements
- Navigate Complex Enterprise Organizations:
- Build and maintain executive sponsor relationships at VP and C-level across each account ie CTO, VP Engineering, VP Platform, VP Data, CIO where relevant
- Develop multi-threaded relationships across buying centers
- Engage procurement, legal, and vendor management proactively
- Identify and cultivate internal champions who will advocate for Aiven expansion within their organizations
- Navigate budget cycles, planning processes, and governance frameworks
- Orchestrate Hyperscaler Partnerships:
- Build relationships with AWS, GCP, and Azure field teams covering your accounts ie account executives, solution architects, partner managers
- Position Aiven as a hyperscaler-aligned solution, not a competitor: we run on their clouds, we drive their consumption, we solve problems their native services don't address
- Develop joint account plans with hyperscaler partners for accounts where cloud commitment or migration initiatives create Aiven expansion opportunities
- Leverage hyperscaler co-sell motions, marketplace transactions, and partner funding where they accelerate deal velocity or improve customer economics
- Identify accounts where committed cloud spend creates budget for managed services
- Execute with MEDDPICC Discipline:
- Qualify every expansion opportunity against MEDDPICC criteria
- Maintain complete opportunity documentation in Salesforce with evidence for each MEDDPICC element
- Forecast with evidence
- Run structured deal reviews
- Coordinate Cross-Functional Resources:
- Direct Solution Architects on technical validation, architecture reviews, proof-of-concept scoping, and technical stakeholder engagement for expansion opportunities
- Align with Technical Account Managers on adoption initiatives, usage optimization, and early warning signals for retention risk or expansion opportunity
- Engage Product and Engineering for roadmap alignment, feature requests, and strategic account requirements
- Coordinate with Legal and Deal Desk on contract amendments, MSA updates, and commercial terms for expansion transactions
Our take
The cloud infrastructure sector is booming as more businesses rely on open-source technologies to run their operations at scale. In this fast-growing space, Finnish company Aiven has carved out a strong reputation since founding in 2016. The company provides fully managed cloud services, helping organizations to use open-source tools without the hassle of managing the technical details.
The company works with a wide range of clients around the world, offering services that cover everything from databases to messaging systems and analytics tools. So, Aiven is helping businesses streamline their cloud operations and focus on growth instead of infrastructure headaches. I doing so, it makes complex technology accessible, reliable and scalable for teams of all sizes.
In 2025, Aiven announced it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a signal of its growing impact in the cloud space. To support its next phase of growth, the company is opening a hub in Cork, Ireland, creating a bunch of new jobs over three years. This expansion puts AIven in a prime position to scale internationally and bring its managed open-source solutions to more companies.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Top investors
6% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
May 2022
$210m
SERIES D
Oct 2021
$60m
SERIES C
Total funding: $420m
Company benefits
- Stocks: Stock options for permanent employees
- Learning & growth: Get ahead with an individual learning budget, access to a web learning platform, coaching, and the ever-growing Aiven library
- Work/life balance: Flexible, regular working hours, and hybrid work friendly
- Health care: Private health and dental care
- Work equipment: The tools you need to do your job
- Cool, collaborative work spaces: with free drinks, treats and fruit
Company HQ
Kamppi, Helsinki
Leadership
Oskari Saarenmaa
(Co-Founder & CEO)Senior Software Engineer and Software Architect for F-Secure Corporation from 2002 to 2011. CEO and Software Architect of Ohmu from 2010 to 2016.
Heikki Nousiainen
(Co-Founder)Experience as Information Security Specialist for TietoEnator. Lead Software Architect for F-Secure Corporation from 2008 to 2015.
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