Founding Account Executive
Apollo Research
Founding Account Executive
Apollo Research
Audits AI models for deceptive alignment
We are building Watcher, a coding agent security product. Watcher is deployed in production and monitors billions of agent tokens per month across engineering teams at agent-building scale-ups and multinational enterprises.
We are hiring our founding Account Executive. You will own the sales cycle from qualified interest to signed contracts and build the playbook the rest of the GTM team runs on.
Our deals start with a security champion: a principal security engineer or director of product security who has seen what coding agents do inside their org and wants Watcher. Deals are won by taking that champion's interest and moving it through the rest of their organisation to a committed evaluation: the platform team that thinks it could build this itself, the CISO who has to sponsor it, the procurement and legal functions that have to let it in. That handoff, including the build-vs-buy conversation, is where deals stall today. Running it well is the core of this job.
We are hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) who run the technical evaluation with you. You own the commercial thread: who needs to say yes, what the evaluation has to prove, and how it converts. You'd work closely with our GTM lead and GTM associate who owns the top of the funnel.
This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
Base Salary: £85,000 - £129,000; Variable: performance incentives against ARR targets
Everyone at Apollo effectively has an unlimited token budget. If a better result costs more compute, use it.
Flexible work hours and schedule
Unlimited vacation
Unlimited sick leave
Up to 6 months of paid parental leave
Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance
Retirement savings with competitive employer matching
Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays
Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences
A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget
Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable)
Time Allocation: Full-time
Location: This is an in-person role working out of our London office, with regular travel to conferences and customer sites. We offer flexible working hours and some wfh arrangements.
Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in the UK. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed for every role or candidate, but if we make you an offer, we'll work with you to find the right visa route.
You will work directly with Kyle Dai, our GTM lead and GTM associate on the pipeline, as well as the FDEs we're hiring to run the technical evaluations alongside you. Marius Hobbhahn (CEO) advises the team. You will also interact with our other SWEs and researchers, since we intend to be "our own customer" by using our products internally for our research work. You can find our full team here.
The rapid rise in AI capabilities offers tremendous opportunities, but also presents significant risks. At Apollo Research, we're primarily concerned with risks from Loss of Control, i.e. risks coming from the model itself rather than e.g. humans misusing the AI. We're particularly concerned with deceptive alignment / scheming, a phenomenon where a model appears to be aligned but is, in fact, misaligned and capable of evading human oversight.
We work on the science of scheming, detection of scheming (e.g. building evaluations), and scheming mitigations (e.g. anti-scheming). We also work on control and monitoring research (see our scalable monitoring agenda). We work closely with many frontier AI companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others, e.g. to test their models and collaborate on the science of scheming. At Apollo, we aim for a culture that emphasizes truth-seeking, being goal-oriented, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and being friendly and helpful. If you're interested in more details about what it's like working at Apollo, you can find more information here.
We also build a coding agent security product called Watcher that secures agent deployments in companies. Our goal is to reduce the probability of catastrophic incidents by securing coding agents, learning about their real-world risks, and publishing our research on how to build these control systems most effectively.
Equality Statement: Apollo Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing equal opportunities to all, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is neither required nor encouraged. Please also feel free to share links to relevant work samples, including anything you have written.
About the interview process: Our multi-stage process includes a screening interview, a take-home exercise (2-3 hours), 2-3 technical interviews, and a final interview with Marius (CEO). If you want to prepare, we suggest using a coding agent heavily for a week and forming your own view on who should be buying something like Watcher, and why.
Your Privacy and Fairness in Our Recruitment Process: We are committed to protecting your data, ensuring fairness, and adhering to workplace fairness principles in our recruitment process. To enhance hiring efficiency, we use AI-powered tools to assist with tasks such as resume screening. These tools are designed and deployed in compliance with internationally recognized AI governance frameworks. Your personal data is handled securely and transparently. All resumes are screened by a human and final hiring decisions are made by our team. If you have questions about how your data is processed or wish to report concerns about fairness, please contact us at [email protected].
Audits AI models for deceptive alignment
Apollo Research is an AI safety organization that audits high-risk failure modes in large AI models, with a focus on deceptive alignment where models pretend to be aligned while pursuing their own objectives. It conducts fundamental research in interpretability and behavioral model evaluations, then applies these insights to audit real-world models. By combining examination of model internals with behavioral assessments, Apollo Research aims to provide stronger safety assurances than relying on behavioral evaluations alone. Its goal is to minimize catastrophic risks associated with advanced AI systems and ensure more reliable, safe behavior in deployed models.
Explore more opportunities at Apollo Research