---
title: 'Account Executive at Formal'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-formal-san-francisco-8eh8krdga1qf'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Account Executive at Formal

- **Company:** Formal
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2025-08-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/formal/411783ef-c2dd-45bb-86c9-e27cc9ea89dc

## Job description

## ABOUT FORMAL

Formal is data security platform designed to help teams understand and control their data on autopilot.

We're building a modern protocol-aware reverse-proxy for datastores and APIs that helps organizations understand their data in real-time. This allows teams to see how sensitive data is stored, consumed, and used in order to enforce least privilege through masking, filtering, or anonymization policies.

We are trusted by leading companies such as Ramp http://Ramp.com, Gusto http://Gusto.com, Notion http://Notion.com to solve problems across data security and compliance, data quality management, and infrastructure access.

Formal is backed by top-tiers VCs including Thrive Capital and Y Combinator with angel investors that include executives and founders from Datadog, Clickhouse, Plaid, and Vanta.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

We're looking for account executives who want to roll up their sleeves and help close deals and develop our go-to-market motion. You’ll need to iterate on positioning, lead generation, and closing processes. We're looking for people to develop our GTM strategy and close key customer accounts as they build the sales process.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Generate leads through cold calling, research, networking, and driving your territory
- Manage and convert inbound leads to drive revenue growth
- Develop and implement full sales cycle strategies for driving product adoption, net new product sales, and client retention at scale among existing Formal customers
- Collaborate with internal teams to ensure customer satisfaction and successful onboarding
- Track and report on sales performance metrics
- Gather client feedback to inform product improvements and enhancements
- Chat with potential customers, understand their business challenges, and explain how Formal can make help them protect their sensitive data

## WHAT YOU NEED

- 5+ years of experience in a Sales role at an early stage startup (seed to series B) with a technical product
- Ability to understand complex technical ecosystems and build great relationships with technical customers
- You have the drive and willingness to go deep on our product to carry a technical conversation with security teams.
- Analytical ability to manage complex sales cycles
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within a team

## NICE-TO-HAVES

- Experience in a fast, high-growth startup environment
- Experience using tools like Temporal and Render
- Extensive knowledge of datastore protocols (Postgres, S3, Kafka)
- Familiarity with cloud computing platforms such as AWS or GCP
- Fastidious approach to CRM hygiene and experience utilizing thorough sales forecasting metrics on a weekly/quarterly basis and communicating them in a succinct manner

## COMPENSATION

- This role offers cash compensation and a stock options grant.
- The positioning of offers within a certain range depends on various factors, including: candidate experience, qualifications, skills, business requirements, and geographical location.

## BENEFITS (FOR U.S.-BASED FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES)

- 100% medical, dental & vision insurance coverage for you
- Partially covered for your dependents
- Flexible PTO

## About Formal

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Formal provides a data privilege access management platform that enforces least‑privilege access at the packet level across databases, infrastructure, and AI agents.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – $6.8M seed led by Thrive Capital, plus earlier Y Combinator pre‑seed)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2022 (Y Combinator S2022 batch)
- **Founders**: Mokhtar Bacha (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Data security / access governance
- **Target Customers**: Engineering‑focused security teams at fast‑growing companies (B2B, Enterprise, SMB) – customers include Notion, Ramp, Gusto, and Cursor
- **Mission / Purpose**: “Bring access management to a new age for engineering‑focused security teams” (LinkedIn) and “secure AGI” (company about page)

## Products & Services
- **Formal Proxy** – A single stateless binary that parses 15+ wire protocols (Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, SSH, Kubernetes, HTTP, MCP, etc.) natively. Deployed in the customer’s VPC, it enforces security policies (allow, block, mask, filter, rewrite, quarantine, etc.) in real time with sub‑10ms overhead. Works with BI tools (Metabase, Looker, Tableau), databases, and infrastructure.
- **AI Agent & MCP Security** – Intercepts and secures interactions between AI agents and MCP servers, stripping PII, blocking unauthorized tool calls, and auditing every action.
- **Real‑Time Session Monitoring** – LLM‑powered anomaly detection for SSH, Kubernetes, and SQL sessions; flags suspicious commands and privilege escalation.
- **Policy Engine & Audit** – No‑code policy editor with Rego support; policy backtesting against 31 days of historical logs; full session/query audit trails exportable to Splunk, Datadog, or S3.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric (Total Funding)**: $6,925,000 across three rounds (Pre‑Seed 2020/2021, Seed 2023 led by Thrive Capital)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Thrive Capital (lead), Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, Definition Capital; founders from Datadog, ClickHouse, Front, Alan; executives from Rippling, Plaid, Vanta, Checkout.com
- **Growth Signals**: 17 employees (+188% YoY headcount growth); customers include Notion, Ramp, Gusto, Cursor; 2,120 LinkedIn followers (+78% YoY); 6 active job postings as of mid‑2026

## Competitive Advantages
- **Protocol‑native, not network‑level**: Parses each wire protocol to make query‑level decisions (e.g., rewrite SQL, mask MongoDB fields) – unlike generic TCP proxies.
- **Single binary, many protocols**: One proxy handles 15+ protocols, eliminating the need to stitch together multiple tools.
- **Sub‑10ms latency**: Compiled Go, stateless, with connection pooling; minimal performance impact.
- **Zero application changes**: No SDK, no agent – just point connection strings through Formal.
- **In‑VPC deployment**: Data never leaves the customer’s infrastructure; forensic‑grade audit trails owned by the customer.

## Strategic Focus
- Securing AI agents and MCP integrations as AI adoption grows.
- Expanding protocol coverage and deepening compliance automation (HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR).
- Scaling go‑to‑market efforts (hiring account executives, solutions engineers, channel specialists) to capture more enterprise customers.
- Building out the “AARM” open specification (mentioned on LinkedIn) for AI agent access management.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture / Environment**: Early‑stage startup (17 people) with a strong engineering focus; in‑office work in San Francisco (2 offices – SF and Paris). Team includes alumni from Stanford, Vanta, Twingate, Ramp, Uber, Databricks, OpenAI.
- **Remote / Hybrid Policy**: In‑office (on‑site required per Built In job listings).
- **Notable Perks**: Opportunity to work on critical infrastructure for data security; backed by top‑tier VC (Thrive Capital); customers are high‑growth tech companies; fast career growth in a small team.

## Sources
1. [formal.ai/about](https://www.formal.ai/about/)
2. [formal.ai](https://www.formal.ai/)
3. [builtin.com/company/formal](https://builtin.com/company/formal)
4. [linkedin.com/company/formalhq](https://www.linkedin.com/company/formalhq)
5. [ycombinator.com/companies/formal](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/formal)

## Other roles at Formal

- [Executive Assistant & Business Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-business-operations-formal-san-francisco-9a7qzfa3vxwh) — San Francisco, CA
- [Staff Software Engineer | Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-formal-san-francisco-gerabht5qgk8) — San Francisco, CA
- [Product Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-marketing-manager-formal-san-francisco-1qpe7830mc8g) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer | Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-backend-formal-san-francisco-e60wg6k37n6x) — San Francisco, CA
- [Channel Account Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/channel-account-specialist-formal-san-francisco-k94xm9aqacgr) — San Francisco, CA
- [Field Marketing Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-specialist-formal-san-francisco-8bmneq1nrncy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer | Fullstack](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-fullstack-formal-san-francisco-k6zj5ayhzfbn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-designer-formal-san-francisco-1rn5mp546j7w) — San Francisco, CA
- [Solutions Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-formal-san-francisco-epps76asj2dy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Software Engineer | Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-backend-formal-san-francisco-708pykf9p05q) — San Francisco, CA