Senior Director of Sales, Couchbase
NEUR
Operational data platform for AI
Open for applications
Operational data platform for AI
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To simplify how organizations develop, deploy, and run modern applications wherever they are.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ Years Individual Contributor (IC): Deep experience as a high-performing Enterprise/Strategic Account Executive. Must have lived the "hunter" life and have a history of closing complex, seven-figure multi-year deals
- 5+ Years Sales Leadership: Proven success managing managers or senior teams. Must show evidence of developing talent and coaching through high-stakes sales cycles
- RDBMS & Cloud: Deep technical fluency in databases (Relational to NoSQL transition). Must understand concepts like latency, high availability, and the modern cloud stack (Capella/K8s)
- AI-Native Background: Must understand the intersection of data and GenAI (RAG, Vector search)
- Regional Acumen:
- UK Focus: Demonstrated ability to lead high-complexity, large-scale enterprise software sales cycles involving multi-layered buying committees
- Nordic Focus: Ability to thrive in a community-driven market; understanding that Nordic success is often "network-first" and relationship-intensive
- Multiply and Develop: A track record of promoting talent and successfully coaching teams to quota attainment
- Drive Transformation: Ability to act as a change agent, helping the team pivot to our AI-focused sales motion without losing momentum on core revenue
- Communicate with Purpose: Mastery of executive brevity; ability to cascade the "why" and "how" of our GTM transformation clearly
- Studies show underrepresented talent is less likely to apply unless they meet all the criteria. We encourage you to apply if you’re excited about the role and can bring strong contributions to our team
What the job involves
- Job Profile: Regional Director, UK & Nordics
- As Regional Director for UK & Nordics, you will be the primary architect of Couchbase’s go-to-market strategy across one of our most critical theaters
- You will manage a high-performance team to drive net-new logo acquisition and ARR expansion, with a specific focus on navigating the transition from legacy RDBMS environments to our Operational Data Platform for AI
- You will be expected to operate as a "Player-Coach," leading from the front on key deals while mentoring the next generation of sales leaders
- Regional Split: 70% UK (Focus: High-volume Enterprise/Strategic) / 30% Nordics (Focus: Community-driven expansion/Relationship-based growth)
- Strategic Leadership: Develop and execute a regional plan that prioritizes the 4,000 global "A/B" ICP accounts, ensuring disciplined execution of the sales motion
- Operational Excellence: Maintain rigorous pipeline hygiene in Salesforce/Pave; provide highly accurate forecasting; and drive standardized sales management practices (MEDDPICC)
- AI Acceleration: Lead the team in effectively positioning our AI value prop—specifically RAG, Vector Search, and Capella—to displace legacy competitors (Oracle/SQL Server)
- Talent Development: Identify, coach, and retain top-tier sales talent, fostering a culture of psychological safety, high-performance, and inclusion, as per the Couchbase Leadership Framework
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as the "quarterback" for the account team, working seamlessly with Solutions Engineering (FE), Customer Success (CS), and Marketing to drive programmatic adoption
Our take
Critical functions for digital businesses such as computing and storage have become cheaper by orders of magnitude with the advent of cloud computing. However, these businesses still face the challenge of architecting their services under this paradigm. Couchbase’s NoSQL database is designed to help organizations build scalable, distributed systems that take advantage of cloud-native infrastructure.
The company's major bets on Kubernetes, mobile and NoSQL have paid off too. With many large enterprises now treating Couchbase as mission-critical infrastructure, a trajectory that culminated because of ts 2021 IPO. While it operates in a highly competitive database market, the company has continued to grow post-IPO and is now positioning itself around the next shift in enterprise architecture: AI-native applications.
The recent launch of Couchbase AI Services reflects an effort to unify operational data, vector search and model hosting within a single platform, reducing the complexity that often prevents generative AI and agent-based systems from moving beyond proof-of-concept. By embedding governance, validation and security controls directly into the data layer, Couchbase is aiming to make its database a core foundation for production AI workloads.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
May 2020
$105m
SERIES G
Mar 2016
$30m
SERIES F
Total funding: $251m
Company HQ
Cypress, San Jose, CA
Leadership
BJ Schaknowski
(CEO)Prior to joining Couchbase in 2025, BJ was the CEO of symplr. He also served as the Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Vertafore and as an SVP of Marketing, Sales & Services at LexisNexis Software Solutions.
Veronica Curran
(CPO)Veronica Previously founded Magnolia People Solutions where she served as a Managing Partner for nearly 2 years. Prior to that, she was the Chief People and culture Officer at SmartBear and the CPO at Alumni Ventures Group.
Gopi Duddi
(CTO)Gopi joined Couchbase in 2022 as an SVP of Engineering, moving into the role of CTO in 2025. Prior to this, he spent 10 years at Amazon AWS, joining in 2012 as a Senior Manager of Database Services before moving into the role of GM. He also spent 7 years at IBM In various Managerial roles.
Josh Harbert
(CMO)Josh is also the co-founder and President of SustainableIT.org. Previously, he served as the CMO at Delphix and the VP of Marketing at Tanium and Qumulo.
Amir Jafari
(CFO)Amir is also the CFO/Head of Finance & Operations at Blend. Previously, he served as the CFO at Plastiq and Reputation.com.
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