Hunter AE

Join Zendesk as a Hunter AE, where you'll create and close durable net-new business by turning priority prospects into customers through disciplined prospecting, consultative discovery, and executive selling.

What you'll be doing

• Create and maintain enough qualified net-new pipeline to meet or exceed quota through targeted outbound, inbound conversion, partner routes, and disciplined territory planning.
• Lead a repeatable prospecting-to-close process: discovery, qualification, value mapping, mutual action planning, business-case development, negotiation, contracting, and close.
• Translate customer business priorities, service-operation challenges, and transformation goals into a credible Zendesk platform and AI value proposition.
• Build executive and multi-threaded alignment across business, technology, security, finance, procurement, and the economic buying committee.
• Own commercial strategy, deal progression, and negotiation within approved guardrails; protect customer value and delivery credibility.
• Orchestrate Solution Engineers, Product Specialists, Marketing, SDR/BDR partners, ecosystem partners, and leadership to improve win probability.
• Maintain accurate CRM data, pipeline health, forecast discipline, and early risk visibility; make decisions based on evidence rather than optimism.
• Document customer goals, stakeholders, use cases, commitments, and success conditions for a clean handoff; return market, competitor, and buyer insight to improve the go-to-market motion.

What you bring to the role

• Day one: a genuine new-business orientation, targeted prospecting discipline, and ability to create qualified demand.
• Day one: consultative discovery that uncovers business problems, urgency, stakeholders, decision criteria, and measurable outcomes before positioning product.
• Day one: executive and multi-threaded selling that earns trust with business, technical, financial, security, and procurement stakeholders.
• Day one: commercial acumen to build ROI narratives, manage deal economics, negotiate thoughtfully, and qualify out when the fit is not credible.
• Day one: CRM, forecast, and operating discipline; the ability to inspect facts, surface risk early, and maintain mutual accountability.
• Developable: deeper Zendesk platform, AI, and service-operations fluency; more advanced industry narratives, partner-led selling, and complex deal strategy.
• Differentiating: the ability to shape the customer's problem, create demand where none exists, and mobilize a buying committee without overselling.
• Scarce: repeated success closing large, complex net-new deals with executive access, competitive strategy, and strong business-case construction.

Experience and qualifications

• Experience range: Typically 8–12 years of related experience.
• Relevant background: demonstrated capability in complex B2B SaaS new-business selling, value-based discovery, and commercial deal ownership.
• Customer impact: demonstrated ownership of outcomes, not only activity; evidence should show decision quality, follow-through, and measurable customer or commercial impact.
• Commercial proof: evidence of prospecting discipline, quota attainment or equivalent growth results, executive engagement, and complex deal judgment.
• AI and platform fluency: ability to discuss AI, automation, service operations, and platform value credibly and know when specialist depth is required.

AI-era expectations

• Discuss AI, automation, CX, and platform value credibly at the business level; bring specialists when deeper technical validation is required.
• Frame AI opportunities in terms of measurable customer outcomes, operating-model change, adoption risk, security, governance, and implementation readiness.
• Use approved AI tools to improve account research, preparation, follow-through, and signal synthesis while protecting customer confidentiality and data.
• Distinguish uniquely human work,trust, judgment, negotiation, and executive alignment,from work that can be augmented or automated.
• Use market and customer insight to refine AI narratives, objection handling, and priority use cases without overstating product capability.