Strategic Account Director at Nexus Cognitive

ABOUT NEXUS You don't have an AI story if you don't have your data story. That's where NexusOne comes in. We're the converged data platform for the AI era — composable by design, built on an open-source foundation, and AI-native from the ground up. One identity, one governance envelope, one operational layer across every mainframe, data lake, warehouse, and streaming system in the business. For the first time, enterprises can bring their existing stack along instead of rebuilding it — and still give AI agents full context across the estate. What we stand for is simple: sovereign data, interoperable systems, decoupled intelligence — delivered the way modern software should be. No rip-and-replace. No multi-year transformation. Our CEO Anu Jain puts it well: we turn the "ball of yarn" of data integrations into a unified engine — less like assembling car parts, more like buying the car ready to drive. 85+ open-source tools pre-integrated. AI-native automations that deploy and self-heal the stack without human toil. Forward-deployed engineers who build shoulder-to-shoulder with customer teams — hands on keyboards, not just on decks. It's working, and fast. We're tripling revenue year over year, backed by Insight Partners, and running in production in environments most vendors won't touch. Our platform processes credit risk data for 90%+ of US small businesses — 40M+ — every month. Intent signals for 300M+ subscribers monthly for Africa's largest telco. The data and AI layer for a Top 3 US bank. We're 100+ people across the US and India, headquartered in Atlanta. We think big, move fast, and don't mistake activity for progress. We hire people who'd rather ship the rocket than brief someone on it. Check out this podcast of Anu talking about our solution here: [Upgrade to PRO to see link] THE ROLE The Strategic Account Director is the single accountable owner for a portfolio of 2–4 named flagship NX1 accounts — the relationship, the program, the value story, and the expansion number. Your portfolio will span multiple verticals — customers in industries such as financial services, public sector, automotive, and enterprise tech, each with a running NX1 deployment and multi-year growth potential. You'll be the day-to-day NX1 face at each customer: the person their CDO or CTO calls when something matters, the person who owns the quarterly value review, the person who identifies and closes the next $3–5M of expansion. Technical depth at each account is supplied by NX1's Forward Deployed Engineers — your job is to be technically literate enough to translate between customer architects and NX1 engineering, hold credibility in every architecture conversation in the room, and know when to pull in deeper resources and when to drive the conversation on business-outcome grounds. A successful Strategic Account Director turns a successful first deployment into a multi-year, multi-million-dollar partnership. The role is intentionally cross-vertical: we expect the right candidate to pick up domain context quickly rather than arriving with deep prior experience across every industry we serve. WHAT YOU'LL DO Portfolio Ownership & Program Discipline - Own the operating model for each account: stakeholder map, value plan, governance cadence, risk tracking, escalation paths — written, maintained, and current - Run a quarterly governance cadence at each customer that's substantive, not ceremonial - Maintain a tight internal cadence with NX1 engineering, product, and FDEs so every internal team always knows the state of each account - Anticipate escalations; never be surprised by them Commercial & Expansion - Carry and hit a multi-million-dollar expansion number across the portfolio - Build value models with the customer — not for the customer — that translate business outcome into platform investment and are signed off on quarterly - Qualify, scope, price, and close expansion in partnership with the commercial team; own the motion end-to-end - Know the difference between expansion that makes sense to NX1 and expansion the customer is ready to pay for Customer Executive Presence - Hold primary relationships with C-1 and C-level stakeholders across business, technical, and governance functions at each account - Navigate complex stakeholder politics without being captured by any single faction - Write at an exceptional level — program briefs, QBR narratives, roadmap memos, exec updates that move decisions Technical Translation - Operate as the technical translator and operational foil — not the technical expert - Sit in customer architecture reviews and contribute: ask the right questions, defend or challenge a design constructively, translate technical decisions into business-outcome language for senior leadership - Know when to defer to the FDE or NX1 engineering, and how to translate their answer to the customer without losing the thread Crisis & Escalation Leadership - Be the NX1 face in the room when something breaks at a flagship account - Coordinate NX1 engineering, customer teams, and escalation path calmly and without adding energy the situation doesn't need - Close the loop after every escalation with a written postmortem the customer can read WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 8–14 years of experience; 5+ years in customer-facing portfolio ownership roles - Has personally owned 3–5 named enterprise accounts with $10M+ combined ACV - Has carried a multi-million-dollar expansion number and consistently hit it - Has worked in or adjacent to regulated or complex enterprise environments — financial services, public sector, manufacturing, healthcare, telecom, or similar - Has coordinated forward-deployed engineering, SE, or consulting teams at customer sites - Technically literate — comfortable in architecture conversations, can review a design document and ask the right questions, understands modern data and cloud infrastructure at the trade-off level - Writes exceptionally well — this will be tested Strong differentiators - Prior background in product management, forward-deployed engineering, or technical consulting that anchors the technical literacy - Has run a portfolio of accounts at a peer company: Palantir FDE Lead, Snowflake Strategic Account, Databricks Resident SA, Anaplan Customer Outcome Lead, Confluent Strategic Account Director - Specific domain experience in one or more of: financial services, public sector, automotive OEM, enterprise data/AI WHY YOU’LL LOVE WORKING AT NEXUS At Nexus, we value people who want to grow — and support each other while doing so. You can expect: - A collaborative team culture built on curiosity and respect - Challenging work where your contributions clearly matter - A leadership team that invests in learning and development - The opportunity to work at the intersection of cloud, data, and AI innovation READY TO APPLY? If this role sounds like a great fit — or even close to one — we’d love to hear from you. We know that no candidate checks every single box, and we’re excited to meet people who bring curiosity, talent, and a desire to build meaningful work together.