Arista Networks is an industry leader in data-driven, client-to-cloud networking for large data center, campus and routing environments. What sets us apart is our relentless pursuit of innovation. Backed by Redpoint.
About the role
The Client Director owns Arista's relationship with one or more of the world's largest cloud providers and frontier AI labs, end to end: strategy, revenue, and trust. You'll be the single point of accountability for high-impact accounts building some of the largest AI training and inference clusters on the planet, shaping the future of AI infrastructure scale. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.
What they're looking for
- 12+ years selling data center networking, optical, silicon, or cloud infrastructure, with at least 5 years owning a hyperscale, cloud service provider, or frontier AI account
- A track record of closing large, multi-year deals (eight- and nine-figure programs) and consistently exceeding quota
- Working technical fluency in data center fabrics: leaf-spine and AI back-end networks, BGP/EVPN, 400G/800G Ethernet, RoCE and congestion management, DCI, and optics. You can hold your own with a customer's principal network engineer
- Understanding of the NOS landscape (EOS, SONiC, FBOSS, and other disaggregated options) and how hyperscalers decide between them
- Experience running complex RFPs and competitive evaluations against well-funded incumbents and white-box/ODM alternatives
- Comfort with the commercial side: pricing strategy, reseller and channel structures, non-standard terms, and working through legal, finance, and supply chain
More about this role
Who You'll Work With
The Client Director owns Arista's relationship with one or more of the world's largest cloud providers and frontier AI labs, end to end: strategy, revenue, and trust. You'll be the single point of accountability for high-impact accounts building some of the largest AI training and inference clusters on the planet, shaping the future of AI infrastructure scale.
This role offers high executive visibility, collaborating directly with Arista leadership and sitting on a Bay Area-based team that covers our most strategic hyperscale and AI customers. These customers buy at enormous scale, move fast, run their own engineering-led evaluations, and expect a peer-level technical partnership from a team that understands their architecture as well as they do.
Build and run a multi-year account plan tied to the customer's AI and cloud roadmap: cluster build-outs, front-end and back-end fabrics, DCI, and next-generation silicon transitions.
Know the customer's org chart cold, from network engineering and architecture through supply chain, procurement, finance, and legal. Build relationships at every layer, up to executive sponsors.
Anticipate where the customer is going...
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