Head of Sales - Appvia
Location: London (Hybrid - in office 3+ days a week)
Contract: Permanent, Full-time
Package: £115,000- £135,000 + OTE up to £230,000 + EMI equity + Additional incentives on product sales
About Appvia
Appvia helps organisations build, secure, and innovate across cloud, data platforms, and AI by blending practical engineering expertise with real-world experience. Drawing on our background in creating open source projects like Terranetes and our self-service agentic developer platform, Wayfinder, we bring that industry know-how and expertise into your organisation to help unlock the true value of the cloud.
As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner and a Specialist Microsoft Partner, we specialise in delivering secure, scalable cloud-native platforms and services, including containerisation, FinOps, modernisation, data platforms and engineering, ML models, and AI integration. Whether organisations are seeking cloud funding, support with their strategy, or a fully managed service, we have the capabilities and solutions to help them succeed.
Our services span cloud platform engineering, data and AI platform delivery, and managed cloud operations, all underpinned by the products we have built and run ourselves. Wayfinder, our self-service, agentic developer platform, is now evolving to include automated cloud operations and infrastructure workflow automation, opening a genuinely differentiated commercial story at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise AI.
About the Role
This is the most senior commercial leadership role in the business. You will report directly to the CEO, sit on the leadership team, and own Appvia’s new business revenue motion across private sector accounts.
You will inherit an active team, this is not a standing-start hire. There are people, pipeline, and relationships already in motion. What is needed now is a leader who can come in quickly, understand what we do and who we sell to, and immediately elevate the team’s performance, focus, and output.
The primary focus of the role is services revenue across cloud, data and AI, and managed cloud, with an exciting opportunity to support the commercial launch of Wayfinder as an agentic developer platform. The right candidate will have a strong services background and understand how to use product to open and expand those relationships.
This is a player-coach role, with both a personal new business contribution and accountability for the team’s collective target. You are as comfortable leading from the front on strategic deals as you are coaching the team and building the structure that drives consistent performance.
Requirements
Sales Strategy and Commercial Leadership
- Work closely with the CEO to define and execute Appvia’s sales strategy: target verticals, ICP, go-to-market approach, pipeline coverage model, and revenue targets
- Own new business revenue across private sector, with a personal contribution target alongside team-generated pipeline
- Be a natural problem solver with critical thinking capabilities, being able to offer solutions to problems and take accountability autonomously for anything revenue related
- Be responsible for designing the team, capabilities, skills inline with the growth of the business, be that through function, solution lines or verticals
- Build and maintain a healthy, well-qualified pipeline with consistent 3x coverage across cloud and platform services, data and AI delivery, managed cloud, and Wayfinder
- Lead commercial strategy for target verticals: financial services, insurance, media and entertainment, energy and utilities, retail and eCommerce, and software vendors
- Drive managed cloud services as a recurring revenue priority, building a predictable base alongside project-based revenue
- Shape the commercial approach to Wayfinder and the agentic AI platform GTM: packaging, pricing, ICP, and how product opens and expands services relationships
Team Leadership, Coaching and Enablement
- Lead, coach, and develop the existing sales team: SDRs, Cloud Alliance and Partner BDRs, and Account Executives
- Rapidly build a strong understanding of Appvia’s services, personas, and sales cycles, and use that to upskill the team, bringing structure, methodology, and confidence to how they prospect, qualify, and close
- Define and embed a consistent sales process: personas, qualification criteria, deal stages, objection handling, and commercial frameworks that the whole team operates from
- Run structured pipeline reviews, a weekly team cadence, and quarterly business reviews, holding individuals accountable to clear performance metrics
- Build a high-performance culture with clear career pathways, consistent coaching, and a bias towards activity and outcomes
- Hire and onboard additional headcount as the business scales, and define the team structure for the next phase of growth
- Work closely with marketing to ensure inbound and outbound motions are tightly aligned and that SDR activity is well-directed, well-supported, and generating quality pipeline
Cloud Provider Relationships and Alliance Revenue
- Build and own senior relationships with AWS and Microsoft field teams, including partner managers, alliance leads, and specialist sales, and use those relationships to drive co-sell pipeline and joint opportunities
- Understand how cloud providers work commercially: how co-sell programmes function, how to navigate AWS Partner Central and the Microsoft Partner Network, how to qualify and progress opportunities through partner channels, and how to unlock MDF and marketplace benefits
- Guide and manage the Cloud Alliance BDR: providing direction on how to engage cloud provider teams, what a strong co-sell opportunity looks like, how to build relationships within the partner ecosystem, and how to convert partner introductions into qualified pipeline
- Maximise the commercial value of Appvia’s AWS Advanced and Microsoft Solutions Partner status through joint GTM campaigns, marketplace listings, and co-funded activity
- Identify and develop new alliance and channel relationships that accelerate pipeline in target sectors
About You
You will be an experienced enterprise sales leader from a services-led technology business. You will have spent the majority of your career selling and leading teams that sell complex, consultative engagements: cloud transformation, platform engineering, data and AI delivery, managed services, or similar. You know this world from the inside, and you can hit the ground running because you already understand how these deals work, who the buyers are, and what it takes to win.
You may well have sold a platform or software alongside services, and that experience is valuable to us. You understand that product in our context is a lever for creating better, deeper, and longer services relationships, and you know how to use it that way as well as having the added benefit of driving product traction and product sales.
What We Are Looking For
- A proven track record of leading and growing a sales team that includes SDRs, BDRs, and Account Executives, with clear evidence of revenue growth and team development under your leadership
- Career background rooted in services, with any product sales background being an added bonus: from a cloud or AWS or Azure partner, managed service provider, data and AI consultancy, DevOps or platform engineering boutique, or a company where professional services was a primary and substantial part of the business
- Deep, first-hand understanding of how services deals are sold: complex sales cycles, multi-stakeholder buying processes, technical and commercial decision-makers, statement of work structures, and how to position and defend services value
- Strong familiarity with the cloud and platform engineering market. You can hold a credible conversation about cloud architecture, data platforms, platform engineering, and AI workloads without being an engineer
- Direct experience working with AWS and or Microsoft as a partner: understanding how co-sell programmes work, how to build productive relationships with cloud provider field teams, how partner pipeline is sourced and progressed, and how to use marketplace and MDF commercially
- Experience leading and coaching a cloud alliance or partner BDR function, or an equivalent outbound function focused on channel and ecosystem-sourced pipeline
- A track record of hitting and exceeding revenue targets both personally and as a team leader, in businesses where deal values typically range from £250k to £5M and above
Benefits
Why join Appvia?
We are a self-funded, London based startup; providing businesses with a fast and secure way to deploy containerised applications into the cloud.
We are on a mission to enable organisations to make cloud-based software delivery simple and efficient, whilst having the insights into costs, security and cadence. As a company that holds customers at the heart of everything we do, we are looking for candidates that want to make a real change to how Dev and Ops is working in the industry.
With us our customers, like the UK’s Home Office & Bank of England, are harnessing cloud-native technologies, limiting the challenges of infrastructure management and rapidly delivering digital products.
What’s on offer?
⚖️ Work-life balance
- Flexible working with core hours of 10-4pm because we know life happens outside of work
- 25 days’ holiday a year, plus bank holidays
- An additional day off for your birthday
- Enhanced maternity and paternity to full pay
- Workplace Nursery Benefit to help working parents
💚 For your well-being
- Full Private Healthcare cover for you with partners and children covered 50%
- Death in Service
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Electric Car Scheme
- Pension plus a salary sacrifice option for even greater savings
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Free hygiene products available in the London office
🧠 Mental health support
- Free therapy through AXA
- Access to the Headspace App
- Trained Mental Health First Aiders
😃 Other fun perks
- Learning budget of £1,000 a year
- Your own MacBook Pro while you work at Appvia
- Dog friendly office
- Wear what makes you comfortable
- Free snacks in the office
- Pool table & ping pong table
- Regular team socials, board game nights, industry meetups and more!
But don’t just take our word for it, you can check out what our Appvians say about us on Glassdoor and by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter and TikTok.
We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and actively encourage, respect, and recognise diversity of thought and background throughout the business. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity, and disability status.
Note: While all roles are active and approved at the time of posting, the dynamic nature of our start-up means some applications may be processed to pipeline talent for future opportunities rather than current openings. We will strive to keep you informed of any changes to the status of your application.
