Director Demand Sales
Paraform
Director Demand Sales
Paraform
Referral-based platform for tech startup recruitment
About Paraform. Paraform is the first end-to-end AI recruiting marketplace, connecting companies with thousands of specialized recruiters and AI agents that work together to fill roles faster and more accurately. We hire for companies like Ramp, Decagon, Rippling, and Hightouch, and we 8×'d revenue last year. We're an early-stage, fast-moving team combining a network of expert recruiters with agentic AI tooling.
The role. We're hiring a Director to own new business at Paraform — the team, the motion, and the shape of the org that comes after it. You'll inherit our A-team of six to eight account executives selling into the fastest-growing startups in the country, and within a couple of quarters you'll be hiring managers underneath you and building a second line. You'll report to our Head of Demand Sales and sit as a core member of the Demand leadership team alongside marketing and engagement management.
Two things make this a Director seat rather than a management seat. The first is that the demand org's structure is genuinely undecided — segmentation, vertical coverage, and the path upmarket are yours to design, not to inherit. The second is that the outbound motion has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Our AEs already cold call and send LinkedIn messages; it isn't the motion that wins in our market. The pipeline that converts here comes out of VC networks, founder communities, dinners, and conferences — investors making introductions because they know you personally. You've built pipeline that way yourself, you've taught a team to do it, and you can install it as a system.
Own new business end to end. Pipeline generation, deal execution, and attainment across the AE team, with a high-velocity motion into seed through Series B founders. You carry the number and the forecast.
Design the org, not just the team. Decide how we segment, where verticalization earns its keep, what the headcount plan looks like, and how coverage changes as we go upmarket. Bring a point of view and defend it.
Build the second line. Promote from within where you can and hire externally where you can't. Within two to three quarters you should have at least one manager reporting to you and a bench behind them.
Install the social-selling motion. Build the VC-referral loop, the dinner program, and the conference presence our outbound is missing — then make it a repeatable system that runs without you in the room.
Take us upmarket. AEs own accounts for 30 days today, which is deliberately high-velocity and, yes, disincentivizes long-tail growth. We're moving to a 60–90 day window with revenue sharing on strategic accounts targeted for Q1. How we actually climb from SMB and seed/Series A into larger accounts is an open question you get to answer.
Partner across the business. Work with marketing and engagement management on liquidity, and with product on how our next products go to market — we'll be multi-product within six months.
7–10 years in sales with four-plus years leading, and visible progression through them. Manager → senior manager → director, or a comparable arc. We're looking for slope: quick promotions, scope that compounds, and ideally an IC-to-manager promotion inside the same company because it means someone bet on you. Long tenure at a flat level is a negative signal for us, not a neutral one.
You've managed managers, or you're unambiguously ready to. You can name the first-time managers you promoted, how you de-risked those bets, and what you'd do differently.
Network-led outbound you've personally owned. You can name the investors you worked with and the events you built pipeline from. If your team's pipeline came from marketing, or from SDR-style cold calling with no network layer, this isn't the right fit.
You've built a playbook from scratch, run it yourself, and handed it to a team — and you can show the evidence it scaled past you.
Strong analytical instincts. You don't need to write SQL, but you know exactly what to ask the data, how to validate it, and how to design a hypothesis-driven intervention when the number is off.
Genuine curiosity about our model. Paraform is a marketplace, not a straight-line SaaS product, and that trips people up. We want someone who asks sharp questions and pushes back in the first conversation, not someone who nods along.
Something non-linear in your background. Founders who went on to scale inside a real organization, athletes, academics, ex-finance operators, or anyone with a pattern of deliberately choosing unusual businesses. This shows up disproportionately in the people who do well here.
Nice to have: multi-product platforms or fintech selling to startups — Rippling, Ramp, Brex, Mercury, Vanta and similar. Ex-investment-banking or consulting before startup sales.
You're building the demand org, not staffing it. The structure past the current team is undecided, and the person in this seat decides it.
A real path to second line and beyond. You'll be managing managers by Q2 with the mandate to hire them yourself. The VP seat above this is open and nobody is lined up for it.
Multi-product within six months. You'll shape how new products go to market, not just sell what exists.
The upmarket motion is unbuilt. We're making real money in SMB and seed/Series A and we're nowhere near upmarket. You can be the person who figures out how we get there.
You'll sell to the hottest companies in tech. The logos on our platform are the ones everyone else is trying to get into.
Location: San Francisco (in office).
Paraform is the first end-to-end AI recruiting marketplace, modernizing one of the largest and most fragmented markets in the world: hiring. We connect companies with thousands of specialized recruiters and AI agents that work together to fill roles faster and more accurately.
We believe recruiting works best when human judgment is paired with AI that truly understands hiring. That's why we treat recruiters like entrepreneurs, not vendors, and build the financial, operational, and technical infrastructure that powers their success.
Industry leaders like Decagon, Palantir, Rippling, Abridge, and Hightouch hire through Paraform, and we grew revenue 8× last year. We're backed by Scale, Felicis, A*, BOND, Liquid 2, DST Global, and the founders of YouTube, Instacart, Canva, and more.
Our mission is to make hiring fast, reliable, and scalable for every company in the world. For more on where we're headed, read our company vision.
Paraform is a referral-based recruitment platform for the tech startup scene. It lets individuals earn money by referring candidates from their personal and professional networks to open roles at startups. Startups post jobs on the platform and offer referral bounties, while individuals browse listings, share unique referral links, and get paid if a referred candidate is hired. The platform earns by charging companies to post jobs and by taking a cut of the referral rewards. Unlike traditional recruiting firms, Paraform leverages personal networks to surface candidates, providing a transparent, straightforward process where both referrers and startups can see the steps and payments. The goal is to efficiently connect startups with top talent through trusted referrals, creating a scalable marketplace that benefits both sides: people who want extra income and startups looking for quality hires.
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