Senior Account Executive - All-Source & Defense Intelligence

The Role

Red Cell Federal is seeking a driven Account Executive with a proven track record of selling enterprise software and services to the public sector. Reporting directly to the CRO, you will own new business development across the military services and Combatant Commands, from the earliest customer engagement through signed contract and award. 

This role requires a proven enterprise software seller. You have carried an individual quota as an Account Executive, you have consistently hit it, and you can speak precisely to your numbers. Experience selling for a startup or early-stage company — a product without an established category or reference base — is what we value most. This is not a seat where we develop a seller; you arrive knowing how to run a cycle 

What You'll Own

• Territory strategy, built jointly. Develop the account plan for your segment with the CSO team, executive leadership, and your peers on the federal team. Bring the field intelligence and a clear recommendation, expect real debate, own the execution once direction is set.

• New business capture. Personally source, qualify, and close new-name business. Own the full cycle from first introduction through award and initial expansion.

• Expansion of existing footholds. Grow the accounts where we are already delivering. Turn a successful pilot or initial award into follow-on scope, adjacent adoption, and durable funding.

• Path to contract. Find the fastest legitimate route onto contract and know why you chose it. Own the vehicle and teaming decisions for your accounts.

• Funding fluency. Identify and align to available funding, work within budget cycle timing, and help customers build the justification to fund a new capability.

• Relationship depth. Build durable trust at the working level, with contracting officers, and at the senior decision layer. Be the person the customer calls before there is a requirement.

• Brand stewardship. Exercise judgment about what Red Cell Federal puts its name on. Credibility in this community compounds slowly and erodes quickly. Surface concerns early and do not chase revenue that costs us standing.

• Product feedback loop. Translate mission problems into concrete input for engineering and product. At this stage, your read on the customer directly shapes the roadmap.

• Operating discipline. Maintain the CRM hygiene, capture process, and forecast rigor that let leadership allocate capital against your pipeline.

• Cross-community positioning. Use the enabling organizations deliberately. An enterprise-level endorsement in this community is worth more than any single program win, and it is the fastest route into the mission groups we have not yet staffed.

Required Qualifications

• Quota-carrying enterprise software AE experience

• Active TS/SCI with a current polygraph at time of offer

• 8+ years selling technology into the intelligence community, with a majority of that time in new business rather than account management or program support.

• Demonstrated capture experience inside the all-source and defense intelligence community specifically. You understand that pipeline here is access-driven rather than market-driven, that much of it never appears publicly, and you have built a book under exactly those conditions.

• A verifiable record of first-dollar-in wins. You have personally sourced and closed significant awards where your company had no prior footprint, and you can walk the entire path.

• Fluency in the acquisition mechanisms available in this community, and the judgment to know which route fields a capability fastest rather than which is most familiar.

• Comfort in a sales cycle where much of the work — and sometimes the customer — cannot be discussed outside a controlled space, with the forecasting and CRM discipline that requires.

• Ability to sell with active, opinionated executive involvement. Takes strategic direction without losing edge, disagrees productively, and holds a room with very senior advisors without either deferring or overrunning them.

• U.S. citizenship. Bachelor's degree, or equivalent depth of operational or military experience.

Preferred

• Prior service as an intelligence officer, analyst, technical collector, or inside an IC acquisition organization. Time on the buying side is worth more here than a conventional sales résumé — provided the software quota requirement is also met.

• Experience selling AI/ML, data platform, or decision-support software into analytic workflows.

• A track record of expanding a single initial award into cross-community or enterprise adoption.
• Existing relationships spanning both the all-source mission and the enabling organizations.

Why Join?

• You are not starting cold. Red Cell Federal has new business on the books, customers asking for more scope, and capability delivering in the field today. You will inherit real momentum, existing relationships, and wins you can point to in a first meeting. Your job is to turn that foothold into something considerably larger.

• You are not alone. This is an early seat on a federal team being assembled now. Peers cover other segments alongside you and more are coming. We would rather this team be generous with account intelligence than territorial about it.

• You will have senior air cover most sellers never get. You will work directly with Red Cell's executive team and the senior government leaders who advise the firm. Knowing when to bring a principal into a room, and how to prepare them, is part of this job.

• You get to set the foundation. The territory plan you write, the accounts you decide are worth our time, and the standard you set for how Red Cell Federal shows up in a program office become the defaults for everyone hired after you. Sellers who join in year three will inherit a machine. You get a say in what the machine does.

• Strategy is set together. Where we go first, and what we attach our name to, are decided with our CSO team, executive leadership, and our senior government advisors. Our standing in this community is our most valuable asset and we will not spend it carelessly. Bring the ground truth, argue your case hard when you see it differently, and execute without hesitation once the call is made.

Compensation: $185,000 base salary / $185,0000 Variable – $370,000 OTE, uncapped, plus equity. This role also includes an uncapped commission plan. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.