Founding Account Executive
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 Building on a bad one is the opposite: out-of-date docs, no SDK in your language, no MCP server.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.
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 genuinely better. Warp and Profound ship SDKs we generate from their OpenAPI documents, in every language their users ask for.
Those are the rooms you'll be in: platform teams, API teams, and the staff engineer who has strong opinions about their spec and is not going to be charmed. They don't want a deck, they don't want a discovery call that's really a qualification interrogation, and they will know within two minutes whether you understand what they build.
Which is the thing that makes this an unusual AE job: you cannot win these deals on relationship and process alone. You need enough command of the product and the category to be useful in a technical conversation, know when to bring the Solutions Engineer in, and know what you can promise. Most of these are displacements - teams already on Redocly, Mintlify, Stoplight, ReadMe, or a homegrown docs site that one engineer maintains resentfully. Winning means making the switch feel obviously worth it to the person who has to do the migration.
What you'll work on
Closing - owning deals from first call through signature: discovery, the technical evaluation, pricing, security review, procurement, and the close. Sourced by our SDRs, by inbound, by our open-source footprint, and handed over from Marc
The founder handoff - inheriting live pipeline from Marc, deal by deal, without dropping any of it. This is the hardest and most important thing you'll do in your first six months
Working with the Solutions Engineer - you two are a pair. They run the POC, the migration, and the live build against a prospect's API; you run the deal around it. Neither of you should be waiting on the other
Competitive displacement - going up against Redocly, Mintlify, Stoplight, ReadMe, and "we'll just build it ourselves," and building the honest answer to each one. We'd rather lose a deal than win it on a claim that doesn't survive the POC
Enterprise requirements - self-hosting, SSO/SAML, air-gapped deployments, security questionnaires, and the procurement cycle that comes with a real platform buyer
Pricing and packaging - we're still learning what this is worth to whom. You'll be in that conversation with the founders, not on the receiving end of it
Expansion - most of our customers start with one team and one API. Growing that into the rest of the org is a large part of the number
Building the motion - qualification criteria, close plans, forecast discipline, and HubSpot hygiene that makes the pipeline legible to the whole company. Whatever you build is what the next five reps use
Making the SDRs better - you're closest to what actually converts. Feeding that back to the two people writing the outreach is part of the job, not a favor
Product feedback with evidence - you'll hear every objection and every gap first. We expect you to say so loudly, specifically, and early
You might be a fit if
You've carried a quota in B2B SaaS for several years and closed deals end to end, including the unglamorous parts - security reviews, procurement, redlines
You've sold a technical product to a technical buyer, and you can hold a real conversation with an engineering leader without reaching for the Solutions Engineer in the first ten minutes
You've worked somewhere without a playbook and built one, or you've been an early rep and know the difference between that and joining a team of thirty
You write well. Short, specific, human - the same standard we hold the SDRs to
You'd rather be honest about a limitation and win the next deal than talk around it and lose the renewal
Sitting next to the CEO while he sells, and then being measured on doing it without him, reads as the appeal of this job rather than the risk
You can hold a forecast you believe in and say the uncomfortable number out loud
You'd rather collaborate to the right answer than win the argument, and you operate with a high level of kindness
Nice to have
Experience at a developer-tools, API, or infrastructure company selling to engineering teams
You've been the first AE somewhere, and can tell us honestly what you'd do 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.