16 Sep
|
Bluebird Recruitment
|
Sydney
16 Sep
Bluebird Recruitment
Sydney
"Founding Account Executive"
RDrive by SnagR
Location: Sydney preferred, Melbourne considered. Remote first with flexible anchor days. Territory is Australia and New Zealand, with core focus on Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.
Compensation: A$100K–A$150K base excluding superannuation, with stretch for the right candidate. Uncapped commission — 8% of licence revenue in year one, 6% in year two, 4% in perpetuity for the life of the client, plus 5% on professional services. On-target earnings intended to sit above $200K.
Other headline inclusions
- Founding commercial hire for Australia and New Zealand, reporting to the GM ANZ/Pacific with direct line of sight to the global CEO.
- Trailing commission in perpetuity on every client you win — you keep earning from accounts you land for as long as they stay.
- Quota ramp of roughly two thirds of target across the first 12 months. No revenue expected in months one to three.
- Warm market — existing Australian client base, live multi-year enterprise agreements, and 18 years of global reference customers.
- Bootstrapped and profitable after 18 years. No external funding, no investor clock, no runway risk.
- Defined path to Asia Pacific revenue leadership, with a sales coordinator funded beneath the role once the motion is proven.
Summary
An 18-year-old, bootstrapped construction and infrastructure SaaS business is making its first dedicated sales hire in Australia. The platform was rebuilt from the ground up over the last decade, the business is dominant in rail across the Middle East and strong in general construction in the UK, and Australia has been named the priority expansion market ahead of the US. There is already a client base here, live enterprise agreements, and long-tenured local expertise — but nobody building net new pipeline.
That is this role.
The Company
Founded in 2007 as SnagR, the business was one of the first in the world to do mobile construction defect management, originally on Windows PDAs before the iPhone existed. Roughly nine to ten years ago the owners made the call to rebuild the entire platform from scratch as RDrive rather than keep stacking on legacy code. It took years and cost a great deal, and the business is now reaping the rewards.
Today RDrive covers quality management, defect and inspection management, progress monitoring, BIM and asset lifecycle records for construction, infrastructure, rail, mining, government, shipbuilding, manufacturing and facilities management. Reference customers include Bouygues, Etihad Rail, Downer, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Jacobs, Qatar Rail, Morgan Sindall, MTR and Nando's.
It is a lean 43-person business, privately held and bootstrapped with no external funding, owned by three brothers, with offices in the UK, the Netherlands, Dubai, Hong Kong, Sydney and the Philippines. Retention is unusually strong — a significant number of the team have been there ten years or more. The business is approached regularly on acquisition and consistently declines; the view from the top is that a two-year private equity horizon does not work in an industry where projects outlast it and clients want to know their vendor will still be there at handover.
In Australia the team is the GM ANZ/Pacific — a 20-year Lendlease veteran who has been with the business since 2016 — plus a delivery lead and customer excellence support.
The Role
You own net current business across Australia and New Zealand, full cycle from self-sourced outbound through to close, focused on Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The core target is Tier 2 and Tier 3 builders, with infrastructure, rail, mining, government and manufacturing all addressable.
Deal sizes are deliberately mixed. Smaller engagements start around $10K–$15K; multi-year enterprise agreements run to a couple of million. The business wants both — quick small and mid-sized wins landing while the larger pursuits mature, rather than a pipeline made entirely of 18-month enterprise bets.
You sell to project directors, QA/QC managers and construction managers,
and their regional and divisional equivalents above project level. IT is a useful secondary route in.
The opening lever is straightforward: RDrive can mimic exactly what a builder does today, but digitally, with communication automated and reporting and analytics generated on top. From there the conversation moves to delayed projects, assurance, and how much the last completed project cost in disputes. Implementation is genuinely fast — a recent stadium project in Saudi Arabia signed on 21 December, was implemented on the 23rd and trained on the 27th.
You inherit past and present project-by-project accounts to grow, the GM shares live leads and provides domain cover on client conversations, and marketing-generated and automated warm leads supplement your own pipeline. Existing enterprise agreements stay with the current team.
You get Sales Navigator, automated outreach tooling, sentiment-based warm lead routing and an established CRM reporting cadence. There is no local SDR or pre-sales function, and no regional playbook. If you want something added to the stack, you make the case and it gets funded — this is a best-idea-wins business where you are expected to argue your position on merit.
What Success Looks Like
- First 30 days: Product and platform immersion alongside the GM and delivery lead. Map the Tier 2 and Tier 3 builder landscape across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Work through the existing and lapsed account base to identify where broader business sits. Reactivate your own network. No revenue expectation.
- First 60 days: Consistent self-generated outbound into mapped accounts. First qualified opportunities in pipeline, weighted toward smaller and mid-sized deals that can close inside the year. Proposals going out — the leading indicator the business tracks most closely.
- First 90+ days: A graded pipeline balanced across quick wins and larger multi-year pursuits, forecast honestly. First closed business. A defensible point of view on where the Australian market is most winnable, fed back to the global business.
- 12-24 months perspective: A$600K–A$700K minimum in year one against a ramped quota of roughly two thirds of target, building to A$1M minimum by end of year two. Australia established as a genuine growth market with a repeatable motion, a sales coordinator hired beneath you, and the option to lead the team or keep selling.
What You'll Bring
Must-haves:
- At least two years of professional closing experience. Long enough to have had deals get away from you, worked out how to save them, and learned something from both.
- Construction credibility. You know how construction procurement works, how projects are structured, how sign-off actually happens, and the compliance context. It does not need to be field management software specifically — an adjacent construction technology background works well, provided you arrive with the fluency and the network.
- Multi-stakeholder SaaS sales with a systematic approach to qualification and forecasting. No particular methodology is mandated, but you need one.
- High agency. No regional playbook, no SDR, no pre-sales, no close management. Comfort operating in grey is ranked above everything else.
- Resilience. You will be tested on this deliberately during the process, because the job involves rooms full of sceptical people.
- Based on the Australian east coast. Sydney preferred, Melbourne considered.
Nice-to-haves:
- An existing network across Australian construction.
- Background at a direct or adjacent construction technology business.
- Progression from a BDR or SDR seat into closing.
- Rail, mining or infrastructure exposure.
Why This Role
Most founding sales roles ask you to prove a market from scratch. This one does not.
The product is mature and rebuilt, there are blue-chip reference customers across five continents, and Australia already has paying clients and live enterprise agreements. What is missing is someone to go and win new business, and the runway to do it properly is genuinely there.
The commission structure is worth reading twice. You earn 8% on licence revenue in year one, 6% in year two, and 4% in perpetuity for as long as that client stays — and where you grow an existing account you earn the higher rate on the growth on top of the trailing rate on the base. This is deliberately built so that landing good, long-term customers pays you for years rather than once.
You also get an unusually short line to the top. This is a family-owned, bootstrapped business where the CEO is personally driving the Australian expansion, and his stated position is that a good salesperson should aim to be the best-paid person in the company.
Why We're Excited About This One
It is rare to find a founding seat with this little structural risk attached. Bootstrapped and profitable after 18 years means no runway conversation and no investor timeline. The market tailwinds are real — east coast infrastructure, housing shortages, active mining and extraction. Retention across the business is exceptional, which tells you something about what it is like to work there. And the trailing commission model is genuinely unusual for a role at this level.
Hiring Process
1. Informal conversation with the Global CEO. A walk through your CV, how you approach your work, and how you like to operate. Deliberately relaxed.
2. Stress-test round with the Middle East Sales Director. You present or pitch on a topic of your own choosing — you will get advance notice, and nobody expects weeks of preparation. It will then be pulled apart in front of you. This is intentional: the business needs to know how you hold up under pressure, because the job puts you in rooms with sceptical stakeholders on your own.
3. Final alignment round, then offer.
The process moves fast — this is not a three or four month affair. The Global CEO is in Australia from Monday 28 September to Friday 2 October and intends to meet shortlisted candidates in person during that window.
FAQ's
Is this a cold market entry? No. There is an existing Australian client base, live multi-year enterprise agreements including one tied to the Queensland trains build, and two long-tenured people on the ground.
Do I inherit accounts? Partly. Past and present project-by-project accounts are handed over to grow. Existing enterprise agreements remain with the current team. The bulk of the mandate is net new.
What is the quota and how does the ramp work? Minimum A$600K–A$700K in year one, building to a minimum of A$1M by end of year two. First-year quota is ramped to roughly two thirds. There is no draw or income guarantee — the business's view is that quota relief works better than cash relief, and no revenue is expected in the first three months.
How does commission get paid? The month after the cash lands. Figures are due by the 15th for the prior month and paid at month end with salary.
What support do I get? Sales Navigator, automated outreach tooling, warm lead routing and CRM reporting, plus the GM's local network, live leads and domain cover on client conversations. Delivery is handled locally with escalation to Hong Kong, the Philippines and the Middle East. No local SDR or pre-sales.
How much travel? Structured as periodic multi-day interstate trips with a full diary of meetings qualified in advance, rather than one-off flights. Expenses covered on a justifiable basis. This is not a role that runs entirely from a desk.
Is there an office? Not currently in Australia — the business runs remotely and has not needed one. If the team wants one as it grows, it will be funded.
Where does this role go? The CEO needs someone overseeing Asia Pacific revenue at some point and that path is open. A sales coordinator sits beneath this role once the motion is proven, and you can choose whether to lead that team or keep selling.
📌 Founding Account Executive (Sydney)
🏢 Bluebird Recruitment
📍 Sydney