Startup Account Executive

About Anthropic Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems. About the role We are seeking a Startup Account Executive to bring safe, frontier AI to India's thriving startup ecosystem from our Bengaluru hub. You will partner with some of India's most innovative startups—from fintech unicorns to emerging SaaS pioneers—helping founders, CTOs, and engineering leaders leverage Claude to transform their businesses. Combining consultative selling with deep technical fluency, you'll own the full sales journey from first outreach through production deployment, while developing market insight into the unique requirements of building in India for both domestic and global markets. Working closely with our global GTM, product, and marketing teams, you'll shape how Anthropic serves the rapidly evolving needs of Indian startups while upholding our commitment to AI safety and reliability. Key responsibilities Build relationships with key stakeholders across India's startup ecosystem, from seed-stage founders to scale-up leadership teams Own the complete sales cycle from initial outreach through implementation, navigating technical decision-makers including CTOs, engineering leads, and product heads, and ensuring successful adoption of Claude across diverse use cases Guide startups from proof-of-concept through paid pilot to production scaling, helping them navigate consumption-based pricing and cost optimisation Collaborate with ecosystem partners including accelerators, VCs, and developer communities to expand Anthropic's presence in India Develop market insights specific to Indian startups—including cost optimisation, scale, multilingual and vernacular language needs, and data residency—and advocate for features that serve Indian developers Gather and document use cases from sectors such as fintech, edtech, healthtech, and agritech to inform the global product roadmap Develop playbooks tailored to the Indian startup sales cycle, accounting for budget cycles, procurement processes, and the balance of technical and business stakeholders Contribute to building a world-class sales organisation in India by mentoring and collaborating with team members and establishing processes that scale Minimum qualifications 8+ years of B2B sales experience in the Indian startup ecosystem, preferably selling developer tools, APIs, or SaaS products Track record of success in consultative selling to technical audiences, with demonstrated ability to exceed targets Deep understanding of India's startup landscape, including key players, investors, and market dynamics Technical fluency to engage credibly with engineering teams on topics such as API integration, LLM fundamentals (context windows, prompt engineering, fine-tuning), common use cases (RAG, semantic search, conversational AI), security and compliance (data privacy, SOC2/ISO), and cost optimisation (caching, batch processing); you don't need to code, but you should confidently translate between business value and technical requirements Experience with consumption-based pricing models and guiding startups from POC to production Understanding of Indian startup buying dynamics, including budget cycles, procurement processes, and common data residency and compliance concerns Strong relationship-building and communication skills, with the ability to navigate from technical teams to C-suite executives Entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to thrive in ambiguity, build processes from scratch, and collaborate across time zones with global teams Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience Preferred qualifications Existing relationships within India's startup ecosystem, including founders, VCs, and accelerator networks Experience selling to Indian unicorns or high-growth startups in sectors like fintech, e-commerce, or SaaS Technical background in engineering or computer science Understanding of AI/ML applications in Indian contexts, from voice interfaces to computer vision Track record of building new markets or launching products in India Active involvement in developer communities, startup events, or tech meetups Proficiency in one or more Indian languages in addition to English Commitment to responsible AI development and deployment, especially in diverse, complex markets like India Logistics Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices. Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team. Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings. How we're different We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills. The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences. Come work with us! Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.