Sales Manager

About K1 Industries

For the first time in decades, power demand growth in the US has jumped 5x, driving multi-year lead times for critical power infrastructure. K1 builds and deploys modular turbine power packages at scale.

The Role

We are hiring a Sales Manager to build K1's customer pipeline and turn opportunities into signed equipment orders and customer deposits. You will generate business through your own outreach and relationships, lead technical and commercial discovery, and own the sales process through close.

Customers will have hard questions about performance, delivery, service and buying from a new OEM. You will work with teammates to establish what customers need to see before committing, then drive that work forward. You will help shape the product and the sales process.

You will start as an individual contributor, with room to help build the sales team as K1 grows. We will set your title and compensation based on your experience. You enjoy spending time with customers, learning the technology and following through until you close the deal.

What You'll Own

Create Customer Opportunities

• Build a focused set of target accounts across data-center operators, power developers and equipment buyers. Earn access through outreach, relationships, introductions and time in the field.

• Build trust with the people who specify, approve, finance and buy the equipment. Develop a customer champion and reach the decision-makers needed to advance the project.

• Qualify the project behind the interest: operating requirements, site readiness, required power date, budget, procurement process and decision authority. Prioritize opportunities that fit K1's product and development timeline.

Lead Technical Sales and Win Commitments

• Lead technical discovery around power demand, operating duty, fuel, emissions and site interfaces. Develop a working understanding of the package and bring engineers into deeper reviews with clear problems to solve.

• Work through the technical evidence, service support and commercial terms a buyer needs to proceed. Build a shared plan for reviews, demonstrations and decisions with the customer.

• Drive proposals and negotiations alongside leadership. Secure equipment orders, customer deposits and long-term service agreements using pilot or reservation agreements where appropriate.

• Keep difficult deals moving and resolve stalled actions and follow up with useful information. Keep the pipeline and sales forecast current, with clear next steps, owners, open issues and expected order dates.

Shape the Product Through Customer Work

• Bring specific buying requirements back to engineering. Distinguish a requirement that opens a market from a customization that could consume the team's time.

• Challenge our assumptions on pricing, competition and customer priorities. Distinguish demonstrated performance from development targets. Work with engineering to decide which requirements K1 must address before an order, which belong in acceptance testing and which K1 should decline.

Qualities We Like to See

• You have personally originated and closed sales of major industrial equipment where customers were taking new technology and supplier risk. You can explain how you earned their trust and turned prospects into signed orders. You understand what customers expect around specifications, performance guarantees, acceptance testing, commissioning, warranties, spare parts and long-term service.

• You have helped bring new hardware from customer evaluation through its first field deployments. You have worked through the issues that surfaced, maintained customer trust and used those lessons to win subsequent orders.

• When in doubt, you get on a plane to solve problems with your teammates and customers.

• You can earn credibility with engineers and discuss economics with commercial buyers. You learn unfamiliar hardware quickly and recognize when a question needs specialist judgment.

• You have advanced sales with incomplete information, multiple decision-makers and meaningful customer risk. You bring structure to the process and know when to change the approach or walk away.

• You organize and own outreach, preparation, follow-up and internal coordination. You follow through on commitments and make progress without a large support team.

• You want to help build an early company and can work closely with founders and engineers through changing designs and priorities.

• You bring relationships with data-center operators, power developers, EPCs or distributed-generation buyers.

• You have worked with turbines, generators, microgrids, equipment financing or long-term service agreements.

Compensation

We offer a competitive base salary, performance-based sales incentives and meaningful early-stage equity. Our benefits include health, dental and vision insurance.

Location

We prefer candidates who work from K1's San Francisco or Carson City locations but will consider remote candidates within the United States. You will travel frequently to customers, project sites and industry events, and spend regular time in person with the team.