Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a complete set of cloud services that enable all companies, from startups to enterprises, to run virtually everything in the cloud. The Frontier startup segment represents one of the most strategically important and rapidly growing areas of AWS, with these customers driving the future of AI and becoming tomorrow's enterprise leaders. As AWS continues to lead in the GenAI and Agentic space, we seek a Director of Frontier Sales to own, operate, and define strategy for the global AI startup business. This role is the single-threaded leader (STL) for substantial revenue driven by AI/ML, GenAI, and Agentic startup customers worldwide, with ambitious multi-year growth targets.

Role Overview

You will be responsible for setting the vision, strategic direction, plan, and goals to win the best AI startups globally. This includes direct responsibility for NAMER GenAI sales teams and support for all global GenAI teams across EMEA, APAC, and LATAM within the Startups organization. You will lead a large, matrixed global organization spanning Sales, Solution Architects, Business Development, and Go-To-Market functions across multiple countries and locations. Unlike traditional sales leadership roles, this position requires single-threaded ownership of an entire market segment with substantial revenue responsibility, direct influence on AWS product strategy through customer feedback, and engagement at the highest levels of AWS and Amazon. Additionally, proficiency in managing direct and matrixed global resources is required, and expertise in emerging AI technologies with an ability to engage technical founders.


Key job responsibilities
Strategic Leadership & Revenue Delivery
• Drive significant annual revenue with strong YoY growth for the Startup segment.
• Own relationships with top-tier AI startups building frontier AI technologies across foundation models, agentic AI, and vertical AI applications.
• Execute complex, high-value opportunities with sophisticated AI startups, navigating technical, commercial, competitive, and partnership elements simultaneously.
• Meet AWS-wide AI revenue targets while building a pipeline of future Enterprise customers.
• Navigate highly competitive environments to secure adoption of emerging startups
Ecosystem & Executive Engagement
• Cultivate and maintain strategic relationships with top-tier venture capital firms and leading accelerators.
• Engage directly with AWS executive leadership and customer C-suite executives.
• Serve as the voice of AI startup customers to AWS service teams, influencing product roadmaps and go-to-market strategies.
Global Organization Leadership
• Lead and develop a globally distributed team across NAMER, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM
• Manage workforce planning and resource allocation globally across multiple countries and locations
• Build and scale high-performing teams spanning multiple job families and functions
• Establish consistent performance metrics and development paths across diverse technical and sales skillsets
• Coordinate with AWS Partner Organization (APO) on co-sell, sell-with, and sell-to approaches
• Own feedback loops to service teams on customer requirements for frontier AI workloads

Complexity Factors

This role operates in a rapidly growing AI market with ambitious revenue targets, requiring:
• Market Segment Ambiguity: Operating without structured playbooks, continually encountering new technologies and business models.
• Technical Depth: Deep expertise in frontier AI, foundation models, training infrastructure, and inference workloads.
• Speed & Precision: Competing at the highest levels for top AI startups.
• Global Coordination: Managing distributed teams across multiple geographies, cultures, and time zones.
• Stakeholder Complexity: Coordinating across internal leadership teams, external partners, and investors