Account Executive – Maritime Decarbonization & Compliance

Your mission Build and work your own pipeline: research target accounts, cold call, cold email, and use your network to get meetings with chartering teams, compliance leads, and CEOs/CFOs at shipping companies. Run product demos and consultative sales conversations — you'll need to genuinely understand how FuelEU Maritime penalties, EU ETS costs, and CII ratings work, well enough to build a specific, credible ROI case for each prospect's fleet. Handle objections from technically sophisticated buyers — their own compliance teams, brokers, class societies. Vague value propositions will not survive these conversations. Adapt the pitch to who you're actually talking to and what they operate: an owner, operator, or technical manager will each care about different things, and a container line, dry bulk operator, tanker company, or project cargo carrier each face different regulatory exposure and cost structure. You'll need to translate FuelEU Maritime, EU ETS, CII, and UK ETS — and ZERO44's specific features — into what matters for that business model. Manage your deals end to end: qualification, demo, proposal, negotiation, close, and handover to Customer Success. Feed learnings from the field back into our commercial strategy, pricing, and product positioning. Your profile A genuine hunter mentality: you're intrinsically motivated to win new customers, comfortable picking up the phone to a stranger, and energized rather than drained by prospecting. Proven experience carrying and hitting a sales quota as an individual contributor — not just "leading a sales motion" or "developing a go-to-market strategy." The intellectual curiosity and discipline to learn a technical, regulatory subject in real depth, and translate it into a simple, credible ROI story for each customer. An understanding of how shipping businesses actually work — the difference between an owner, an operator, and a technical manager, and how their incentives and pain points differ; and how a container line, a dry bulk operator, a tanker company, and a project cargo carrier each experience regulation and cost differently. If you don't have this yet, you're genuinely curious enough to build it fast. Strong objection-handling skills and comfort in a room with people who know more about their own ship's engine than you do — and the ability to hold your ground with facts. Structured, disciplined follow-through: you keep a pipeline organized and move deals forward without needing to be chased. General comfort with everyday software: you can navigate Google Workspace, a CRM like HubSpot, video calls, and screen sharing on your own, and you don't lose momentum when something needs a login, an update, or a five-minute fix. This is a software company — you should like using tools, not tolerate them. Experience selling into shipping, logistics, energy, or another asset-heavy, regulated B2B industry. Experience selling compliance, ESG, or technical SaaS products. English fluency (German is a plus for our Berlin base and DACH prospects). Why us? A smart team that genuinely wants to build — people who are a joy to work with, and who take the work seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Flat hierarchies: direct communication with the founders and influence on real product decisions. A high level of independence — you own your pipeline, your process, and your outcomes, with the trust to run your own show. A real chance to shape not just sales, but ZERO44's product development and company strategy — the insights you bring back from the field feed directly into what we build and where we go next. A compensation structure with a meaningful, uncapped commission component tied to revenue you close. Flexible set-up: we're open to full-time employment or a freelance/fractional engagement, depending on fit. How to apply Send us a short note — no cover-letter fluff — about one deal you're proud of closing: how you found it, what almost killed it, and how you got it over the line. Include your CV.