Account Director (Public Sector DACH)

About the role

The Account Director will lead the development of deepset's public sector business across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This new-business role involves selling sovereign AI solutions to federal, state, and municipal administrations through both direct sales and partner ecosystems. You will have full ownership of the territory strategy and report directly to the Public Sector Lead.

Responsibilities

• Define the DACH public sector go-to-market strategy and build a qualified pipeline from zero across federal, state and municipal accounts.
• Map buying centres end to end and time pursuits to budget cycles and funding windows.
• Lead tenders end to end with pre-sales, legal, security and finance including bid/no-bid, pricing, compliance documentation and EVB-IT contract terms.
• Shape requirements early through market consultations and pilots, and run below-threshold deals quickly.
• Build a partner ecosystem with SIs, public sector IT service providers, framework holders and sovereign cloud providers.
• Close complex multi-stakeholder deals, turn first deployments into references, and bring market and compliance insight back to Product and Leadership.

Required skills

• Enterprise software sales
• Public sector sales
• Tender management
• EU procurement law
• German
• English

Nice to have

• AI sales
• Data infrastructure
• Open-source infrastructure
• BSI C5
• IT-Grundschutz

Qualifications

• 8+ years in enterprise software sales
• 5+ years selling to the public sector in DACH
• Experience leading tenders under EU and national procurement law
• Native or near-native German and professional English

Benefits

• Flexible hours
• 30 days vacation
• Family sick leave
• Competitive salary
• Stock options
• Monthly sports and mental health support allowance
• Annual learning and development budget
• Monthly team socials
• In-person meetups
• Dog-friendly office

About the Company

Founded in 2018, deepset builds open and enterprise-grade tools that help teams build AI with purpose. Backed by GV and Balderton, the company provides the Haystack open-source framework and the Haystack Enterprise Platform to help organizations solve complex challenges with AI.