Sector Guide
AI companies hire under uncertainty: the product changes quarterly and the buyer is still writing the budget line. We find sellers who can create a category, not just work an existing one.
Key Facts
Budget frequently created, not reallocated
Engineer-seller hybrids in demand
Equity heavily weighted early stage
From kick-off, every engagement
In most AI deals there is no incumbent to displace and no line item to capture. The seller has to build the business case, find the budget and manage a procurement process that has new questions about data residency, model governance and evaluation.
That favours people with early-stage or category-creation experience over people who have inherited mature territories at a large vendor.
Founding account executives and first enterprise sellers, forward-deployed engineers and applied AI solutions architects, AI-native sales engineers, and GTM leadership for Seed to Series C companies.
We also see growing demand for revenue-operations hires who can build usage-based and consumption forecasting from scratch.
We test how candidates behaved when the product was incomplete: what they promised, what they refused to promise, and how they worked with engineering on scope. It is the single best predictor of success in an AI scale-up.
2026 pay benchmarks
| Role | UK | US | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise AE | £90k–£110k base · £180k–£220k OTE | $140k–$170k base · $280k–$340k OTE | Large-ACV roles run 5.5–6x quota-to-OTE |
| Sales Engineer / SA | £85k–£110k base · £105k–£140k OTE | $150k–$185k base · $190k–$240k OTE | 80/20 split; cyber and AI infra pay a premium |
| VP / CRO (EMEA or NA) | £170k–£230k base · £320k–£430k OTE | $200k–$300k base · $400k–$600k OTE | Equity typically 0.5–1.5% at Series B |
Full dataset: 2026 GTM salary and hiring benchmarks. Model the cost of a vacant seat with the quota loss calculator.
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