Account Executive - Director
Company Description
Candidly was founded in 2016 to flip the script on what it means to plan, borrow, repay, and save for college. Today, we’re the category leader with the market’s most comprehensive AI-driven student debt and savings optimization platform. We partner with hundreds of top employers, financial institutions, and retirement record keepers, positioning Candidly to serve more than 35 million Americans.
We’re already achieving incredible results — to date, we’ve helped our users get on track to eliminate more than $1.8B in student debt and pay off their loans 175,000 years quicker — and we’re seeking movers, shakers, innovators, and problem solvers to help take our mission even further.
Candidly is a high-growth, Series B startup, funded by leading investors including Altos Ventures, Aflac, Salesforce Ventures, UBS, Equal Opportunity Ventures, Impact Engine, Rethink Impact, Unum, and Cercano Management. Our fully remote, international team of 70 (and counting) includes alumni from Google, UBS, Twitter, Plaid, Prudential, LendingTree, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and more.
Job Description
Director-level Account Executives at Candidly are elite, hands-on closers responsible for building pipeline and closing the most complex, high-impact deals in the business. This is not a strategy role and not an inbound-only role.
Director AEs are expected to personally generate pipeline through outbound, run disciplined sales cycles, and close large, multi-stakeholder deals with rigor. This role carries significant autonomy—and equally significant accountability—especially during periods of funnel rebuild and growth.
What You'll Do
Outbound & Pipeline Creation
- Personally source and build pipeline through consistent, high-quality outbound activity
- Execute targeted outbound motions across priority accounts and buyer personas
- Partner with Marketing and Partnerships, but do not rely on inbound
- Maintain sufficient pipeline coverage to support predictable closes
Deal Execution & Closing
- Lead complex, high-value sales cycles from first touch through close
- Navigate executive buying committees and multi-stakeholder decision processes
- Build clear business cases and ROI narratives
- Own procurement, legal, security, and contracting workflows end-to-end
- Close fewer, larger, more complex deals with discipline and follow-through
Operating Excellence
- Maintain exceptional CRM hygiene, pipeline visibility, and forecast accuracy
- Run structured deal processes with clear next steps and accountability
- Collaborate cross-functionally to move deals forward
- Model best-in-class execution and professionalism
What Success Looks Like
- A consistently rebuilt, outbound-driven pipeline
- Predictable quota attainment driven by self-sourced opportunities
- High close rates on complex, multi-threaded deals
- Trusted, no-ego presence internally and externally
- Willingness to do the work required in build phases—not just harvest phases
What We're Looking For
- 7–10+ years of enterprise SaaS closing experience
- Proven track record of driving adoption and fulfillment in a partner-led or channel sales environment
- Exceptional organizational skills with experience tracking performance against contractual commitments
- Comfort leading product demos, handling sales objections, and engaging in customer-facing deal support
- Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence without direct authority
- Experience generating and managing upsell opportunities within a partner portfolio
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment with evolving processes
- Experience in the financial wellness, retirement, or employee benefits space
- Familiarity with retirement recordkeepers, financial institutions, or benefits brokers
- Previous work in a high-growth startup or scaling partner program
- Experience with Salesforce, partner portals, and enablement tools
- Demonstrated success building pipeline via outbound, not just closing inbound
- Proven ability to close large, complex six-figure ARR deals
- Comfort navigating procurement, legal, and security reviews
- Strong negotiation and executive communication skills
- High accountability, resilience, and bias toward action
- No-attitude mindset—focused on outcomes over titles
Background and EEOC
Candidly offers for employment are conditioned upon satisfactory completion of our employment screening process (including, but not limited to, a review of past employment and education records, background investigation, and/or credit check & fingerprints).
Candidly strives to foster an environment where every employee can succeed. As an Equal Opportunity Employer we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, veteran status, or any other basis covered by applicable law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.