Sales Manager - Energy Commodities Analytics

About Vortexa:

Vortexa combines AI, satellite data, and proprietary vessel tracking to give the world’s most sophisticated trading and shipping teams a clearer view of global flows. We’re a venture-backed scale-up with offices in London, New York, Houston, Singapore, and beyond.

The Opportunity:

Vortexa is the real-time intelligence layer for global energy and freight markets. Our AI-driven platform is used by the world’s largest trading desks, supermajors, and shipping companies to make sharper decisions on commodity flows, pricing, and freight exposure. We’re scaling fast across the Americas, and we’re hiring a Sales Director to take ownership of a defined territory - with a clear mandate to win new logos.

This is a pure hunter role: your focus is originating and closing new business. After a new customer signs, you’ll have a short window to land early expansion before handing the account to our Account Management team.

A defining focus of this role is selling Vortexa’s API and MCP-based solutions into technical and front-office buying centers. Our SaaS platform remains the foundation of our business and you will sell it confidently - but API-led adoption is the fastest-growing part of our Americas opportunity, and we need someone who can lead with it.

How You'll Work:

You will not be expected to generate 100% of your own pipeline. You will operate as part of a coordinated commercial pod:

• Dedicated BDR support - you’ll partner daily with an aligned BDR on outbound sequencing, target account research, and meeting generation. You’ll be expected to coach, prioritize, and direct that resource against your account plan.
• Marketing partnership - you’ll work closely with the AMER Marketing team on ABM plays, event-driven pipeline (trade shows, customer roundtables), and content tailored to your priority segments. We expect you to bring a clear point of view on what you need from Marketing, not wait to be served.
• Applied Intelligence - our AI team will partner with you on technical discovery, API/MCP demos, and POC scoping. You drive the commercial agenda; they own the technical depth.
• Account Management and Customer Success - you’ll partner with AM and CS on onboarding and handover.
• AI-augmented selling - we expect you to use AI tools every day for account and persona research, call preparation and follow-up, and drafting tailored outreach. The goal isn’t more volume; it’s sharper relevance and more time in front of buyers.

What You'll Own:

New Logo Acquisition

• Originate, qualify, and close new logo opportunities across financial, energy, and shipping segments in your territory.
• Build and maintain a multi-quarter pipeline
• Run disciplined account plans on named targets - mapping personas, identifying entry points, and orchestrating multi-threaded campaigns with your BDR, Marketing, and Applied Intelligence partners.
• Prospect on signals, not lists - track trigger events (new desks or strategies, leadership and data-team hires, market dislocations, sanctions and trade-policy shifts) and turn them into timely, insight-led outreach that stands out from generic, automated messages.
• Lead with API and MCP - identify and develop opportunities where our API and MCP server solutions are the entry point, particularly with data, quant, and engineering buying centers. This is a strategic priority for the territory.
• Navigate expanded buying groups - including procurement, information security, and data-governance reviews - and anticipate questions on data licensing and permitted use of Vortexa data in AI models and agents.
• Sell SaaS and API as complementary offerings, not alternatives.

Early expansion and handover

• Use a short, defined window after signature to land early expansion - additional users, use cases, or API integrations - while the relationship is fresh.
• Hand each account to Account Management with a complete handover: stakeholders, use cases, commercial terms, and identified growth paths.

Commercial discipline

• Maintain clean, current, and credible pipeline data in Salesforce.
• Forecast weekly with accuracy and conviction.
• Partner with Revenue Operations on territory planning, deal structuring, and pricing strategy.

What Success Looks Like in Year One:

• Achieve or exceed annual new ARR target, delivered through new logo wins and their early expansion.
• Close ~15 new logos in priority segments, with at least 75% including an API or MCP component.
• Build qualified pipeline at 4x+ coverage, including at least 50% self-sourced.
• Demonstrate effective leverage of BDR and Marketing partners - measured by meeting volume, account penetration, and pipeline sourced via supported channels.

Requirements

What You'll Bring:

• B2B sales experience, with consistent at-or-above-quota attainment and a proven track record of closing new logo business with companies that operate in or trade the shipping and freight markets and/or the crude oil and refined products markets.
• Relevant customers include trading houses, oil majors and NOCs, refiners, shipowners and operators, charterers, and brokers, as well as the banks and funds active in these markets. You understand how these businesses make money and where market intelligence affects their P&L.
• Demonstrable success selling complex, high-consideration products to sophisticated front-office buyers - crude, products, and freight traders, analysts, portfolio managers, chartering managers, or risk.
• Direct experience selling API, data, or developer-facing products - you’re comfortable in a discovery conversation that spans both a Head of Trading and a Head of Data Engineering.
• Hands-on fluency with AI tools in your own sales workflow - you can show how you use them, and you know where human judgment and relationships still win.
• A working understanding of how customers are adopting AI and agentic workflows - enough to explain credibly why delivering Vortexa data into models and agents via API and MCP matters to a trading desk.
• Strong commercial instincts across qualification (e.g., MEDDPICC) and negotiation.
• Excellent written and verbal English; ability to communicate clearly with both senior executives and technical end-users.

Also Valuable:

• An established network of decision-makers at crude, products, and shipping companies across the Americas.
• Familiarity with MCP, API monetization models, or modern data infrastructure sales motions.
• Hands-on market background - for example, as an analyst, broker, or trader - in vessel tracking, commodity fundamentals, or freight.

Benefits

• Stock-options in a fast-growing, high-potential business
• A vibrant and diverse workplace
• An open, collaborative, and supportive working culture built on merit, which celebrates creative thinking and “getting things done.”
• The opportunity to work with AI-driven technology in a scale-up environment with commodity trading experts
• 401k with up to 2% contributions matched by Vortexa
• Private Health Insurance offered via Blue Cross Shield
• Dental and Vision cover offered via Guardian
• Global Volunteering Policy to help you ‘do good’ and feel better