Regional Sales Director - West Coast

CIQ OVERVIEW

CIQ builds the enterprise infrastructure that powers the world's most demanding workloads. From the operating system layer through AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, and cloud-native orchestration, CIQ delivers the speed, security, scalability, and sovereignty that major enterprises, government agencies, and research institutions depend on.

CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the developer of the RLC Pro family of Enterprise Linux distributions, Fuzzball workload orchestration, Warewulf Pro cluster provisioning, and Ascender Pro automation. Our customers include some of the largest and most technically sophisticated organizations in the world, working across HPC, AI/ML, defense, and regulated industries.

We are a company of builders, operators, and open source practitioners. If you want to do work that matters, at a company that is genuinely changing how enterprise infrastructure gets built and run, we want to talk.

Position Summary

The Regional Sales Director - West is a player-coach role leading a team of 5+ Account Executives / Senior Account Managers covering the West Coast territory (CA, and broader Western US as assigned). The role combines a full personal quota on named strategic accounts with direct team leadership, coaching, pipeline, and revenue accountability for the region.

Key Responsibilities

Personal Quota Carriage (Player)

• Personally carry a full Regional Sales Director quota on named strategic accounts within the West territory.
• Run personal outbound/inbound qualification motion; source, advance, and close opportunities end-to-end on assigned named accounts.
• Maintain 3-5x pipeline coverage on personal quota; keep MEDDPICC current on every personal deal.

Team Leadership & Coaching (Coach)

• Lead, coach, and develop 5+ direct reports (Account Executives / Senior Account Managers) across the region.
• Run weekly deal reviews using MEDDPICC, regular objection-handling, and skills-development clinics.
• Conduct weekly 1:1s, quarterly performance reviews, and document individual development plans.
• Join discovery calls, negotiations, and key customer meetings alongside reps on top accounts.
• Own hiring, onboarding/ramp, and performance management for the regional team.

Pipeline & Forecasting

• Own regional pipeline build and coverage discipline against quarterly team quota.
• Submit weekly regional forecast to the VP Sales with commitment/upside/downside discipline.
• Maintain HubSpot hygiene across the regional team (stage, next step, close date, MEDDPICC fields).

Methodology & Account Strategy

• Enforce the MEDDPICC framework on every qualified opportunity in the region.
• Build and own account plans for the region's top strategic accounts; multi-thread into top accounts.
• Own territory planning - validate and tier accounts T1/T2/T3; align rep assignments across the team's book.

Cross-Functional

• Provide region-specific feedback to Marketing on ICP, messaging, and content gaps.
• Partner with Channel/Partner head to activate regional SI/GSI and reseller partner relationships for co-sell motions.
• Represent CIQ at regional industry events and customer engagements as needed.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 10-12+ years of B2B enterprise sales experience selling infrastructure/software into North American enterprise accounts.
• 5+ years in a sales management or player-coach role, with direct experience leading teams of 5 or more reps.
• Consistent quota attainment (≥100%) across multiple years, including personal carry.
• Deep fluency in MEDDPICC, MEDDIC, Challenger, or equivalent - and demonstrated ability to coach reps to apply it.
• Hands-on operator on HubSpot or Salesforce for forecasting, pipeline management, and deal hygiene.
• Experience selling software, SaaS, infrastructure, or open-source-adjacent commercial offerings to IT/engineering buyers.
• Based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Orange County, CA; comfortable with a field-based role and regular in-market customer travel.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience at enterprise infrastructure / open-source companies.
• Familiarity with Linux, HPC, AI infrastructure, or DevOps/cloud-native ecosystems.
• Prior experience building a region or team from an early stage - establishing playbooks and cadences from first principles.
• Existing network among West Coast enterprise IT, HPC, or AI infrastructure buyers.

Location & Work Model

• Field-based role; home base in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Orange County, CA.
• Regular in-person meetings with prospects and customers across the West territory; travel as required.
• Standard CIQ tooling: HubSpot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Zoom, Slack.

Reporting & Team Structure

• Reports directly to VP Sales (Global).
• Manages 5+ Account Executive / Senior Account Manager direct reports.
• Partners with Sales Engineering on technical discovery and POC execution.

BENEFITS

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• Flexible paid time off.

• Employee stock options.

• Remote work; no travel required for most positions.