Founding Account Manager

*Resume must be in English*

About respond.io

Founded in Hong Kong in early 2017, respond.io is an AI-powered business messaging platform that helps companies manage customer conversations across chat, calls and email, all in one place. We are trusted by businesses in over 127 countries and recognized by G2 and SME100, and we operate as a globally distributed team with a diverse and inclusive culture.

Our Culture

• Solve Customer Problems: Every effort must solve real customer pain points. No guesswork, just real feedback and clear value.
• The 80/20 Rule: We focus on the 20% of actions that create 80% of the value. Simple is powerful.
• 100% Alignment, 80% Accuracy: Perfect plans can wait. Clear goals come first.
• Be Direct: We give honest feedback and tackle problems head-on.
• Own It and Support Each Other: We step up, help out and drive outcomes together.
• Build Human Connections: Work is better when we trust, care and celebrate wins together.

Role Description

We're hiring our Founding Account Manager for the MENA to build respond.io's Account Management function in MENA from the ground up. This is a Day 0 role: there is no existing playbook, no fixed KPIs and no template. You will work directly with the Head of Department to design how we engage, retain and grow our self-service customers and small key accounts across the MENA.

You will spend roughly 70% of your time on our self-service cohort, customers who today have never spoken to a human at respond.io, and 30% on a small portfolio of high-potential key accounts. Your job is to move the self-service base from 'unmanaged' to 'observed and engaged', run monthly engagement experiments, and surface what drives retention and expansion in MENA. You will succeed if you are energized by ambiguity, comfortable deciding with incomplete information, and excited to be part of a small founding team.

The role

MENA is not one market. Customers buy in different languages, rely on different messaging channels, and operate under GDPR and local data-protection expectations that shape how they roll out WhatsApp and AI agents. A large share of our MENA customers bought respond.io without ever talking to a human. That changes with you.

Your goal is to help MENA customers expand, retain and get more value from the platform through onboarding and best practices. It is a one-to-many role, so you will learn how to make an impact at scale across several languages and countries rather than account by account.

This is an early-stage role. We have a first version of the Account Management playbook and early results, but the MENA is untouched. You will be the first AM in the region, working directly with the executive team, with real room to shape how the playbook evolves as it scales globally.

This is a commercial role. You grow revenue from existing customers and stop revenue from leaving. If you want to own a number and build the machine others will later operate, keep reading.

What you'll do

Grow the base

• Own expansion revenue: usage growth, plan upgrades, monthly-to-annual conversions and multi-location rollouts.
• Find adoption opportunities by helping customers deploy best practices, use AI agents and adopt more platform features.
• Work from usage and billing signals, because that is where expansion converts.
• Run activation rescue on accounts that bought but never fully deployed, including accounts stalled on WhatsApp Business setup or compliance questions.
• Tailor engagement by country and language, and share what works so it can be repeated across markets.

Defend the base

• Spot at-risk behavior early and intervene before the cancellation, not after.
• Analyze every MENA cancellation, find the root cause, document it and share it with product and revenue leadership.
• Stabilize high-potential accounts that currently have no dedicated point of contact.
• Handle customer questions on data privacy and GDPR in partnership with our security and legal teams.
• Log every account touch from day one. We measure AM impact with data, so your results will be provable, not anecdotal.

What we're looking for

• 2+ years in B2B SaaS Account Management, Customer Success or Sales, where you held a revenue, expansion or retention number.
• Managed a portfolio of 50–100 accounts and know how to focus on the ones that matter most.
• Fluent English and Arabic, with the ability to run customer conversations and onboarding in both. French is a strong plus.
• Based in the MENA and comfortable working MENA business hours (roughly GST/EET), with some overlap with our APAC and EU colleagues.
• Working knowledge of the MENA business landscape, including how GDPR and data-residency expectations affect SaaS and messaging adoption.
• Familiarity with how MENA businesses use WhatsApp and other messaging channels is a strong plus.
• Data-driven by default; fixes broken things without being asked; comfortable operating where the playbook is still being written.

What's in it for you

• Founding role with direct exposure to the executive team and real influence over the function's design.
• Clear growth path: build the MENA playbook and have a team built around you.
• Base plus variable tied to expansion revenue and retention performance.
• The ownership of an early-stage role, backed by a profitable and well-funded company.
• Flexible, remote-friendly environment built for sustainable performance.