[Hiring] Account Executive @Kaiko Systems GmbH

Role Description

We are looking for an Account Executive to turn the meetings our SDRs book into signed customers. You pick up a prospect who has agreed to a conversation but has not yet decided they want the product, work out how Kaiko fits their operation, show them, and carry it through to a signed pilot. Our buyers are technical, conservative and relationship-driven, so the work is in understanding how they run their fleet well enough to be credible.

• Take the meetings our SDRs book: Read the handover notes and come to the first call already knowing the company, the fleet, and what prompted the conversation.
• Run discovery that finds the real problem: Ask the uncomfortable second and third question. Understand how the prospect runs inspections, reporting and vetting today, and what it costs them when it goes wrong. Disqualify early when the fit is not there, because a clean no in week one saves everyone a quarter.
• Demo the product yourself: You run your own demos, with no sales engineer beside you. Know the platform well enough to build the demo around the prospect’s fleet, their problems and their vocabulary, and to answer the hard technical questions in the room.
• Write and defend the commercial proposal: You put together the pricing, scope, timeline and terms, and then you stand behind them. Be ready to explain how you got to the number and to hold it when the buyer pushes.
• Build a pipeline of your own: The SDRs will keep meetings coming, and you add to them through referrals, conferences, and the accounts in the CRM that have gone quiet.
• Stay close after signature: Stay useful through the pilot and afterwards, and grow the account into expansion, references and introductions.
• Feed the market back into the company: You sit closest to the buyer. Objections, competitor moves, missing features and pricing pushback reach product and leadership while they are still relevant.
• Improve how we sell: Process, CRM discipline, materials and playbooks, as we grow within the UniSea Group.

Qualifications

• At least 2 years closing B2B SaaS or technical solutions, carrying and hitting your own quota.
• You are comfortable with outbound. You will pick up the phone to someone who has never heard of us, and you treat a quiet week as your own problem to solve.
• You run your own demos, and you will learn a product deeply enough to be credible in front of a technical superintendent or a fleet manager with twenty years behind them.
• You have commercial judgment. You can build a proposal, explain a pricing model, and negotiate without conceding the things that matter.
• You keep your CRM current without being asked. If it is not in the CRM it did not happen, and your forecast holds up.
• You have resilience and self-direction. Sales cycles are long, the industry is conservative, and you will work your region largely on your own.
• Maritime, logistics, industrial or other complex B2B experience is an advantage.
• You speak fluent English. Additional languages relevant to your region are an advantage.
• You can work remotely with discipline, your working day overlaps substantially with Central European Time, and you are willing to travel for conferences and customer visits.

Requirements

• Month 1: You can run a full demo on your own, and you understand how a ship manager operates: inspections, vetting, PSC and the reporting chain. You know enough that a superintendent can talk to you in their own terms.
• Month 2: You are running first meetings yourself and getting prospects to a second conversation.
• Month 3: Anyone can look at your pipeline and understand it. Every open opportunity has a named problem, a decision process and a date against it, and the team can build a quarter’s forecast from what you have recorded.
• Month 4–5: You have taken deals through to proposal on your own, and when you lose one you can say why, specifically enough that we change something as a result.
• Month 6: You have closed your first paid pilot and handed it over cleanly, and you are hitting your targets month after month.

Benefits

• A clear path forward, and the honesty to help you take it. You own your region from the start, and we are clear about what the step up to larger accounts asks for. You will hear how you are doing early and directly, while the feedback is still useful, because that is how we work with each other.
• Direct access to the people who make decisions. We are a small team inside a larger group, so what you learn in the market reaches the people who can act on it.
• The backing of the UniSea Group, which means the stability and reach of a larger maritime software business behind a team that still moves quickly.
• Regular team time together and company events.

Company Description

Kaiko Systems is a Berlin-based technology company digitalizing how the world's merchant fleet stays safe and seaworthy. Our AI-powered platform turns frontline inspections, technical checks, and compliance workflows into structured, actionable fleet intelligence, helping ship operators prevent incidents, pass vettings, and run safer operations.

Founded in 2020, we have grown into a trusted partner for 40+ shipping companies worldwide, with our software used by crews and technical teams on hundreds of vessels. In 2026, Kaiko joined forces with UniSea, a leading Norwegian maritime software provider, forming a group that covers the full spectrum of maritime safety, quality, and operational software. For our team, this means startup speed and ownership combined with the reach and stability of an established international group.

We are a team of 40+ people from over 15 nationalities, spanning maritime experts, engineers, designers, and commercial talent. We work closely with the people who actually sail and manage ships, and we build products they genuinely want to use. If you want your work to have a visible impact on a massive, under-digitalized industry that carries 90% of global trade, you will feel at home here.