Job Description
Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built for the Agentic AI Era. We’re the creators and primary maintainers of Crossplane, and we’re building the Intelligent Control Plane—a new platform layer that makes infrastructure programmable, autonomous, and composable.
Our mission is to power the AI-native enterprise with a foundational platform layer that helps teams provision, operate, and adapt infrastructure at scale—so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. We partner with leading cloud providers, ISVs, and open-source communities to help organizations move faster with greater confidence.
Today, Upbound supports Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across 100+ countries. Crossplane has surpassed 100M+ downloads and is used by 1,000+ teams worldwide. We’re a Series B company backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, and we’ve raised $69M to date. Learn more at upbound.io
The Commercial Account Executive - North America role is an outside sales position responsible for developing, managing, and closing business within commercial and mid-market accounts and is an integral part of the field sales organization. This person will partner with our demand generation, solutions engineering, and product teams to guide prospective customers through a solutions sales journey of modernizing their cloud platform architecture using Upbound’s control plane technology. This position will require you to develop a strong understanding of the challenges commercial customers face as they scale infrastructure and platform engineering practices, helping them achieve meaningful business outcomes through Upbound’s solutions.
This role reports directly to Upbound’s VP of Sales, and you will work cross-functionally with Product, Marketing, Sales Development, and Customer Success to build strong customer relationships and drive both pre-sales and post-sales success.
In this role, you will:
- Carry a sales quota aligned with Upbound’s commercial revenue goals.
- Serve as the primary point of contact and face of Upbound for new prospects and customers.
- Own the full sales cycle, from prospecting through close, within commercial and mid-market accounts.
- Manage multiple concurrent sales cycles with varying deal sizes and shorter sales timelines.
- Partner with Solutions Engineering to guide customers through technical validation and adoption.
- Generate pipeline through outbound efforts and by partnering closely with SDRs, Marketing, and ecosystem partners.
- Drive expansion within existing accounts by identifying new use cases and stakeholders.
- Maintain accurate pipeline and forecast by clearly documenting deal progression, stakeholders, and buying criteria.
- Continuously look for ways to improve sales processes, messaging, and customer engagement.
- Represent Upbound at customer meetings, industry events, and conferences as needed.
You are a good fit if you have:
- Proven track record of consistently meeting or exceeding quota in a commercial or mid-market sales environment.
- Experience selling cloud, cloud-native, or developer-focused products (infrastructure, DevOps, platform engineering, etc.).
- Strong foundation in solution and value-based selling.
- Ability to manage a high-velocity pipeline while maintaining strong deal quality.
- Experience engaging both technical stakeholders (engineers, platform teams) and business decision-makers.
- High level of ownership, drive, and accountability in building and closing pipeline.
- Strong communication skills across written, verbal, and virtual interactions.
- A collaborative mindset and willingness to partner cross-functionally to win deals.
- Curiosity and eagerness to learn complex technical concepts and translate them into customer value.
- Energy, resilience, and a genuine passion for building something early and impactful.
It’s a plus if you:
- Have experience selling into platform engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure teams.
- Are familiar with Infrastructure as Code tools (Terraform, Ansible, etc.) or Kubernetes ecosystems.
- Have experience selling open source-based or developer-first products.
- Have worked in a high-growth startup or early-stage go-to-market environment.
Why Upbound?
At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you’re excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table.
About Upbound
Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit www.upbound.io.
