Cyber Security Sales Head - Founder Leader

Cyber Security and Enterprise Sales Head - India (Founder Leader)

Location: PAN India (Remote)

Compensation: Decent base + attractive variable + uncapped commission

Experience: 10+ years enterprise cybersecurity and enterprise SaaS sales, product-company background

MANDATORY EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: Cybersecurity Sales, AI Security background with SaaS based product company background and startup working exposure (sales from scratch without any team, as an IC) is mandatory requirement. Also, Strong hunter experience is required, not just farming.

READ THIS FIRST:

This is a founding sales role with a leadership title attached. You will not inherit a team, a pipeline, a marketing engine, or an SDR. For the first two to three quarters, you carry the number yourself, alongside the founders. If you win, you build the team underneath you — and the title becomes literal.

If you want to run a function that already exists, this is the wrong role. We'd rather say so now than in month four.

ABOUT KAPALINS:

Kapalins builds an AI-native security and governance platform for enterprises adopting generative AI — managing AI risk, model and data exposure, governance, and compliance across LLMs, copilots, and agentic systems.

Enterprises in India and the Middle East are deploying GenAI faster than they're governing it. Security and risk teams are being asked to sign off on systems they cannot fully see. That gap is our market, and it's opening right now — 2026 is the category-formation year for AI security, much like 2015-16 was for cloud security.

We're hiring our first senior commercial leader in India.

WHAT YOU WILL ACTUALLY DO:

• Own the India number end to end: territory design, prospecting, discovery, POC, commercials, close.
• Build and activate relationships with CISOs, CDOs, CTOs, and Heads of Risk — starting with AI-heavy mid-market fintech, healthtech, insurtech, and GCCs, where time-to-value is fastest and procurement friction is lowest.
• Create budget where none is allocated yet. AI security rarely has its own line item today, so you'll sell into risk, data governance, and compliance budgets first.
• Run the technical conversation yourself in the early days, with founder support. There's no SE bench to hide behind.
• Build the repeatable motion: ICP, qualification, objection handling, pricing guardrails, partner and distributor channels.
• Feed the roadmap — what you lose deals on will shape what we build next.
• Hire and lead the team once the motion is proven.

WHAT YOU NEED TO HAVE DONE:

We care about evidence, not adjectives. You should be able to walk us through specifics, live, in the room:

• A currently active pipeline in enterprise cybersecurity, data security, or AI-native SaaS — not a pipeline you built three years ago. We want to hear what you're hunting right now: deal count, stage, size, and timeline.
• Named, reachable relationships, not a claimed network. Give us specific CISOs, CDOs, or risk executives you could call this week — and a credible read on how fast they'd call you back.
• Product-company experience. Not services, not staffing, not reselling. You've sold a product with a roadmap, a live POC process, and a named competitor.
• Personally originated and closed net-new deals, ideally in the INR 25 lakh–5 crore range. You can state deal count, average size, cycle length, and who you beat — and the numbers reconcile when we ask.
• Startup scar tissue. You've sold without brand recognition, without inbound, and without a support structure — and you can describe, honestly, what didn't work.
• Real fluency in AI-security concepts — shadow AI, non-human identity (NHI), data leakage into third-party models, prompt injection, agentic risk and tool access, AI governance and India's DPDP Act obligations. You don't need to be a researcher. You need to be credible in the first meeting, and able to translate a technical risk into a business case on the spot.
• A point of view on where to sell first, and why — not I'll sell everywhere. We want to hear your segmentation logic and why you'd avoid the traps (e.g., large enterprise banks are often GSI-locked and margin-poor for an early-stage vendor).

A note on the AI part: if you have deep security-selling credibility (DLP, CASB, IAM, data governance, GRC, cloud security into regulated buyers) and your AI-security knowledge is real but recent, please apply. The commercial track record is the harder half, and we'll invest in the rest. If your only AI signal is a headline change, this role will expose it in the first month.

WHO THIS IS NOT FOR:

• Sellers whose numbers came from renewals, expansion, or an assigned book.
• People who've only sold inside a category leader with marketing-generated pipeline.
• Managers who haven't personally closed a deal in the last few years.
• Anyone who needs process, brand, and headcount in place before they can perform.
• Anyone whose relevant experience is strong, but historical — we're looking for someone already mid-motion on this exact hunt.

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Competitive fixed compensation, a serious variable component, and uncapped commission. The top end of this role is a function of what you close, not a band.
• Meaningful equity in a company at the beginning of its story.
• A direct line to the founders, real influence over product and market strategy, and no layer between you and the decision.
• First-mover position in a category that is forming in India and the Middle East right now.

WHY SOMEONE GOOD SAYS YES:

Timing. AI security in India in 2026 is where cloud security was in 2016. There's a short window to be the person who defined the market, rather than the person who joined it.

Ownership, not inheritance. You set the ICP, the pricing posture, and the playbook. Very few people at your level get to do this without founding the company themselves.

Economics. Uncapped commission plus equity in an early company. If you build this, you own a share of what you built.

HOW TO APPLY:

Apply through LinkedIn. In one paragraph, tell us about one net-new deal you personally originated and closed: how you found the first conversation, who signed, and what nearly killed it. That paragraph matters more to us than your CV.

You can also write to [Confidential Information] with the subject line: VP Enterprise Sales | [Your Name]

Know more: www.kapalins.com

Kapalins is an equal opportunity employer.

Regards,

Kapalins