Enterprise AE at Chainguard – DevSecOps Sales Career in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
High-growth startup with elite backing: Chainguard is backed by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and IVP — a signal of serious growth-stage ambition. For an enterprise AE, this means genuine upside in stock options (with an unusually long 10-year exercise window) and the opportunity to help build a market category from near-scratch. Supply chain security is one of the hottest segments in cybersecurity right now.
Compensation: No salary is listed, but enterprise AE roles at well-funded security startups of this profile typically carry OTEs of $200,000–$280,000 USD (or equivalent in EUR/SEK for European territories), with 50/50 base/variable splits common. The equity terms described — secondary offerings and a 10-year exercise window — are genuinely above-market and reduce risk for early employees.
Skills you'll develop:
- Deep expertise in supply chain security, a rapidly expanding regulatory and enterprise concern (e.g., EU Cyber Resilience Act, US EO 14028)
- Technical sales fluency in Kubernetes, DevSecOps, and container security — highly transferable skills
- Enterprise territory management at a category-defining startup, which is resume-defining experience
Green flags: Customer list includes OpenAI, Snowflake, and Fortinet — strong proof points that ease future sales cycles. Transparent equity model, unlimited PTO, and strong parental leave signal a mature people-first culture despite startup stage.
Watch for: Startup pace and evolving processes may frustrate those who prefer stable, defined sales playbooks. Quota expectations at high-growth companies can be aggressive.
Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.
Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.
Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.
The role, in a nutshell:
We're looking for highly motivated sales executives who have strong market knowledge and enjoy building relationships with key decision makers to evangelize building secure and reliable software. Our sales team walks a mile in their customers' shoes and wants our customers and prospects to see the immense value and expertise Chainguard's solutions offer.
Skills/Job Requirements:
- Define and execute sales plans for your assigned territory
- Convey value prop and product differentiators to prospects and customers
- Forecast, meet, and exceed quota
- Through a combination of inbound and outbound leads, develop and manage leads funnel
- Manage business and track opportunities through CRM and other supporting tools
- Collaborate on and improve all aspects of the sales cycle, including product, support, and sales engineering
- Understand the competitive market, being familiar with competing companies and their offerings
Candidate Background:
- 5+ years of Enterprise Sales Experience
- Domain experience with one or more of the following required: Compute platforms (Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), DevOps Tooling, CICD platforms (Github, Gitlab, Jenkins) and overall SDLC
- Strong track record consistently overachieving sales targets
- Ability to learn new products and processes quickly
- Competitive/Driven
- Excellent communication skills — verbal and written
- Team player
- Must be willing to travel to clients to support sales relationships (if required)
- Entrepreneurial – willing to go the extra mile, strong work ethic, resourceful
Desired Qualifications:
- SaaS or Developer tools sales experience
- Startup experience
- A strong sales aptitude and fundamental understanding of the sales process
- A sound, tech-savvy business acumen and the ability to articulate a compelling value proposition in a complex and evolving business environment
- Ability to thrive in an agile environment with an ever-evolving set of solutions
About Us
We live and breathe our company values:
- We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
- We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
- We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
- We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.
A few of the benefits we offer:
- Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
- Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
- 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
- ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
- 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.
If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.
Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice.
©2026 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved.
Frequently Asked Questions
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