Sales Director (H/F)

The Mission

You are the first person to build and scale Merlain's commercial engine. With FX, you turn founder-led sales into a repeatable motion: structured outbound, strategic accounts, a reliable pipeline and enterprise closing. You own the number, the method and, tomorrow, the team.

Responsibilities

• Build Merlain's sales motion with FX: ICP, segmentation, messaging, sales cycle, qualification and closing process.
• Launch and run outbound: multichannel sequences targeting retailers and e-commerce brands of 10 to 200 people, with a measurable activity rhythm.
• Open and close key accounts: enterprise cycles, multiple stakeholders (CEO, CFO, e-commerce, ops and IT leads), RFPs and security reviews.
• Own the pipeline end to end: forecasting, CRM hygiene, weekly reviews, conversion metrics at every stage.
• Lead commercial and contractual negotiations, including VPC and on-premise offers, alongside the tech team.
• Build the sales toolkit: pitch, use-case-driven demos (stock, margin, conversion, cash collection), case studies, ROI calculators, playbooks.
• Bring the field back to the product: objections, recurring needs, priority connectors, pricing signals.
• Prepare what comes next: define profiles, recruit and grow the first sales hires (SDR, AE) once the motion is proven.

Profile

• 5+ years in B2B SaaS sales, with a proven closing track record on mid-market and enterprise accounts.
• You have already built or structured a sales machine at an early-stage company — not just operated an existing one.
• You master modern outbound and know how to generate your own pipeline.
• You sell measurable business value (margin, cash, time saved) to executives, not features.
• You are comfortable discussing data, AI and security topics with a CIO, without needing to be an engineer.
• Rigorous with pipeline and forecasting: your numbers are reliable.
• Self-driven, results-oriented, comfortable with the ambiguity of a startup.
• Fluent French, professional English.

Nice to Have

• Experience selling to retail, e-commerce or DTC brands.
• A network in the French or European retail and e-commerce ecosystem.
• Experience selling data, BI or AI solutions.
• You have already recruited and managed a first sales team.
• Familiarity with security-review cycles and VPC or on-premise deployments.

What We Offer

• A founding role on the commercial side: you lay the foundations of Merlain's sales motion.
• A direct pairing with FX and Aymen, with no management layers.
• A product that demos fast: value is visible from the first alerts.
• A large, concrete market: every retailer and e-commerce brand still running on spreadsheet exports.
• Real autonomy and visible impact on the company's trajectory.
• The Tech Forward (EDHEC) environment, with a presence planned at Station F.
• An equity package that matches a founding role.