Education Account Executive

Education Account Executive | London-Hybrid | £76,500 - £102,000 OTE

The role

Our exclusive client is bringing AI-powered tutoring into schools that have never had access to it - and they need someone who can walk into a headteacher's office and make the case in person, not just on a slide. This is a new-business sales role where the product genuinely changes outcomes for kids, which makes it a very different sell to most SaaS AE roles: you're not just closing a deal, you're getting a school to trust something new with their students. You sell on trust here, not pressure - every school's specifics are different, but the underlying pain is usually the same once you know how to spot it.

You'll run full sales cycles end to end - from a cold conversation with a head of department through to a signed multi-academy trust, where the deal changes shape entirely: bigger, multi-threaded, and capable of unlocking dozens of schools off the back of one relationship done well. Most days start with several in-person meetings, which means this role rewards someone who'd rather be in a school than on a fourth Zoom call of the morning.

It also sits closer to product than a typical sales role. What you hear on the ground - what schools actually push back on, what makes them say yes - feeds straight back into how the product and go-to-market evolve.

Mission comes before everything else here. Our client doesn't treat “passionate about education” as a nice-to-have on a CV - they need someone who genuinely believes in what a school stands to gain, because a rep who doesn't buy it gets read instantly by a headteacher, and it shows up in the numbers within a quarter. That conviction is weighted equally with sales track record, not a tie-breaker between two similar candidates.

What you'll actually be doing

• Becoming a name schools trust before you've even walked through the door - leading every conversation with real, current knowledge of how AI actually improves student outcomes, not a rehearsed pitch
• Running 3-5 sharp, well-qualified new-business meetings a day with Heads of Department and senior leadership teams
• Running fast, full-cycle deals - discovery call, demo, follow-up, close - and not letting any of them go stale in the gaps
• Growing a single school relationship into a Multi-Academy Trust or local-authority deal, where one conversation done well can open the door to dozens of schools at once
• Carrying a steady cadence of inbound leads while helping crack outbound from scratch - working out who the real school ICP is, where they actually are, and which channels genuinely reach them
• Helping build the automated GTM machinery - standardised follow-ups, one-pagers, decks - so the repeatable parts of the job run themselves and your time goes into the relationships that actually need a human
• Handing schools over cleanly to Account Managers post-signature, so the first term goes well rather than just closing and moving on
• Bringing structured feedback from teachers and school leaders straight back into product and marketing, so the pitch and the product both get sharper every week

Where you'll be

Central London, 3 days/week in the office, with regular in-person school visits across the rest of the week.

Who we're looking for

Non-negotiable

• Genuine, demonstrable belief in the mission - closing the gap between talent and opportunity for young people the system has overlooked. Weighted equally with the criteria below, not a tie-breaker.
• UK-based, with the right to work here without sponsorship - daily in-person school visits make remote or overseas working impossible
• A track record of carrying and hitting a new-business number, in EdTech or another relationship-led sales environment
• Genuine fluency in how schools actually work, not just sales-speak about them - a teaching background is a strong plus, not a requirement
• Comfortable building the process as you go, in a startup that's still figuring some of this out
• Real, hands-on interest in what AI can (and can't yet) do in a classroom - you can go three levels deeper than the marketing copy
• You don't need to be technical, but you genuinely need to care about the outcome for the kids in the room - that's what tells a headteacher this isn't just another vendor pitch

Strong signal, not a requirement

• Direct experience selling into schools, MATs, or local authorities
• Time spent actually teaching or working inside a school
• Experience taking a product from a handful of logos to a repeatable GTM motion

Compensation, benefits & culture

• £45,000-£60,000 base, £76,500-£102,000 OTE
• Central London, hybrid (3 days/week in office) plus school visits
• A sales role where the product is genuinely hard to argue with once a school sees it
• Share options - genuine ownership in the business, not a token gesture
• Private healthcare, including dental and mental health support, plus gym discounts
• An annual personal-development allowance to spend on your own growth
• Equipment set up so you can do your best work from day one
• Fortnightly team socials on the house, plus bigger quarterly events
• 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, with extra days off over the Christmas shutdown

Values aren't a poster on the wall here - they're genuinely what holds the team, members, partners, donors and investors together as one community, and it shows up in how decisions actually get made, not just in the induction deck.

Interview process

• Informal video discussion with EQL Tech - the recruitment partner running this search
• Initial video call with the hiring manager
• A task-based interview - your chance to actually show what doing this job well looks like, not just talk about it
• Values interview with the COO, CEO, and wider team