Key account Director

<p>We're a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to become the trusted Data &amp; AI Platform for everyone, leveraging the most popular open-source technologies like Apache Kafka®, PostgreSQL®, ClickHouse®, and OpenSearch® to help companies accelerate time-to-market, drive efficiency, and build innovative solutions across any cloud.</p> <h2>About this Team</h2> <p>Our Customer Growth team plays a crucial role in our growth and profitability. We want to be the trusted data platform for everyone – which, let's face it, is an ambitious target. But thanks to our dedicated sales, pre-sales, and post-sales teams we are growing fast.</p> <p><strong>Our customer-first philosophy:</strong> The software we create is merely a means of delivering value. Our thinking is customer-first. That's why our customers are at the front and center of all we do. We're by their side, actively helping them solve their challenges through collaboration, sharing, and innovation.</p> <h2>Our Crabby Principles</h2> <p>Aiveners use the V2MOM framework to set and align on business goals. In order to achieve those business goals we live by our 'Crabby Principles' which unite us in our ways of working, globally. These principles are embedded in our business processes and support us in collaborating and role modelling positive and productive behaviours in our daily work, something you will have the opportunity to demonstrate throughout your interview journey with us.</p> <h2>The Role</h2> <p>As <strong>Key Account Director, North America</strong>, 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.</p> <p>This is a <strong>pure expansion role</strong>. You are not hunting new logos. You are responsible for <strong>net new expansion ARR</strong> 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.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>These accounts share common characteristics that define the role:</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li><strong>Scale and complexity:</strong> Multi-thousand-person engineering organizations with distributed decision-making across business units, geographies, and technology domains</li> <li><strong>Multiple stakeholders:</strong> No single buyer controls the relationship. You will navigate matrixed procurement, IT governance, platform teams, and line-of-business engineering leaders simultaneously</li> <li><strong>Strategic growth vectors:</strong> 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</li> <li><strong>Hyperscaler interdependence:</strong> 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</li> <li><strong>Consumption-based economics:</strong> Revenue scales with usage. Your job is to drive adoption that compounds over time, not to negotiate larger upfront commits that sit unused</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>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.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>There are clear success metrics:</strong> <strong>Net new expansion ARR</strong> annually, <strong>100% gross retention</strong> of the base, <strong>3.5x qualified pipeline coverage</strong> against expansion targets, and <strong>±10% forecast accuracy</strong> at commit. <br>You will maintain <strong>executive sponsor relationships</strong> at VP+ level in each account and develop <strong>documented account plans</strong> with identified whitespace, competitive displacement opportunities, and 12-month expansion roadmaps.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>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.</p> <h2>What You'll Do</h2> <h3>Own Expansion Revenue Outcomes:</h3> <ul> <li>Deliver <strong>net new expansion ARR</strong> annually across 6 named strategic accounts through new workloads, new services, new business units, and competitive displacement.</li> <li>Protect and retain <strong>existing ARR</strong> with <strong>100% gross retention</strong></li> <li>Build and maintain <strong>3.5x qualified pipeline coverage</strong> against expansion targets using rigorous MEDDPICC standards for every opportunity.</li> <li>Achieve <strong>±10% forecast accuracy</strong> at commit with evidence-based qualification&nbsp;</li> <li>Drive <strong>consumption growth</strong> through adoption initiatives that expand usage of contracted services.</li> </ul> <h3>Build &amp; Execute Strategic Account Plans:</h3> <ul> <li>Develop <strong>12-month account plans</strong> for each of the 6 accounts with documented whitespace analysis, stakeholder maps, competitive positioning, and prioritized expansion plays.</li> <li>Identify and qualify <strong>growth vectors</strong>: new Aiven services not yet deployed, new cloud regions, new business units, workloads on self-managed infrastructure, competitive displacement opportunities.</li> <li>Map <strong>organizational structure and decision-making authority</strong> across platform engineering, data engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, and line-of-business technology teams.</li> <li>Maintain <strong>living account intelligence</strong>: executive changes, organizational restructures, strategic initiatives, M&amp;A activity, technology roadmap shifts that create expansion opportunities or retention risk.</li> <li>Present <strong>quarterly business reviews</strong> internally with account health assessment, pipeline status, risk register, and resource requirements.</li> </ul> <h3>Navigate Complex Enterprise Organizations:</h3> <ul> <li>Build and maintain <strong>executive sponsor relationships</strong> at VP and C-level across each account ie CTO, VP Engineering, VP Platform, VP Data, CIO where relevant.</li> <li>Develop <strong>multi-threaded relationships</strong> across buying centers</li> <li>Engage <strong>procurement, legal, and vendor management</strong> proactively.&nbsp;</li> <li>Identify and cultivate <strong>internal champions</strong> who will advocate for Aiven expansion within their organizations</li> <li>Navigate <strong>budget cycles, planning processes, and governance frameworks</strong>&nbsp;</li> </ul> <h3>Orchestrate Hyperscaler Partnerships:</h3> <ul> <li>Build relationships with <strong>AWS, GCP, and Azure field teams</strong> covering your accounts ie account executives, solution architects, partner managers.</li> <li>Position Aiven as a <strong>hyperscaler-aligned solution</strong>, not a competitor: we run on their clouds, we drive their consumption, we solve problems their native services don't address.</li> <li>Develop <strong>joint account plans</strong> with hyperscaler partners for accounts where cloud commitment or migration initiatives create Aiven expansion opportunities.</li> <li>Leverage <strong>hyperscaler co-sell motions, marketplace transactions, and partn