---
title: 'VP of Sales at Scholarly'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-sales-scholarly-denver-7wjbtmbfjcwd'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-17'
---

# VP of Sales at Scholarly

- **Company:** Scholarly
- **Location:** Denver, CO
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/scholarly/2a47e4d5-1a58-4b6e-b237-c94a1b57df6a

## Job description

Vice President of Sales Company: Scholarly Location: Denver metro area; open to remote for exceptional candidates Reports to: CEO & Co-Founder Compensation: $175,000 - $215,000 base salary, based on experience; on-target earnings (OTE) of $300,000 - $400,000; substantial equity

## About Scholarly

Scholarly is building the next generation of AI-powered software for higher education with a faculty-first focus. As institutions face a wave of digital transformation, our mission is to become the AI-native system of record for faculty data. Our platform unifies fragmented workflows into a single, intelligent system that powers annual reviews, promotion & tenure, appointment tracking, and more, while eliminating manual data entry and improving decision-making for institutions. We’re a mission-driven, product-focused team shaping the future of higher education.

Position Overview Scholarly is seeking a Vice President of Sales to own new-logo revenue and build a repeatable, scalable sales engine as we grow. This is an ideal role for a proven higher education or EdTech sales leader who has closed complex institutional deals, built and coached a high-performing team, and wants to have a direct, visible impact at a fast-growing startup. This role is a mix of hands-on selling, team leadership, and go-to-market building. You’ll lead our team of Account Executives and Sales Development Representatives, personally engage in our most strategic pursuits (R1 research universities, academic medical centers, multi-campus systems, and formal RFPs), and build the process, forecasting discipline, and playbook that let the team scale behind you. We’re looking for someone who is comfortable switching between a meeting in the provost’s office, a procurement negotiation, and a pipeline review with their team.

## Key Responsibilities

Revenue & Pipeline Ownership

- Own the company’s new-logo ARR target, pipeline generation, and sales forecast.
- Personally lead or co-lead strategic pursuits at large accounts, engaging provosts, vice provosts for faculty affairs, deans, CIOs, and procurement teams.
- Navigate long, multi-stakeholder higher education buying cycles, including RFPs, consortium contracts, and fiscal-year budget timing.
- Build accurate weekly forecasting and pipeline discipline in our CRM (HubSpot).
- Partner with the CEO on pricing, packaging, and deal strategy for complex opportunities.

## Team Leadership

- Lead, coach, and develop Account Executives and SDRs; set clear quotas, activity standards, and territory plans.
- Recruit, hire, and onboard new sales team members as the team grows.
- Run deal reviews and call coaching, and establish a consistent sales methodology across the team.

Go-to-Market Building

- Build and continuously improve the Scholarly sales playbook, including ideal customer profile and segment definitions, qualification criteria, discovery and demo standards, proposal and RFP processes, and competitive positioning.
- Define and track the metrics that matter (e.g., pipeline coverage, win rate, sales cycle length, average contract value, quota attainment, SDR-to-AE conversion) and drive improvements against them.
- Partner with marketing on outbound, events, and account-based campaigns targeting priority institutions.

Internal Collaboration

- Ensure clean handoffs to Implementation and Customer Success, with accurate expectations on scope and timeline.
- Bring customer and market feedback to Product and Engineering to shape the roadmap.
- Work with Customer Success to identify and close expansion opportunities within existing accounts.

## Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree required.
- 10+ years of B2B SaaS sales experience, including 4+ years leading a quota-carrying team.
- Track record selling enterprise software into higher education strongly preferred; experience with other complex institutional buyers (academic medicine, healthcare, public sector) also considered.
- Consistent record of meeting or exceeding quota and closing six-figure, multi-year deals with long sales cycles.
- Experience responding to and winning formal RFPs and navigating public procurement.
- Experience building sales process at an early- or growth-stage company; comfortable operating without a large support structure.
- Strong command of CRM tools and pipeline forecasting.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; executive presence with senior academic leaders.
- Passion for higher education, EdTech, or mission-driven software preferred.

## Compensation & Benefits

- Base salary: $175,000 - $215,000, depending on experience.
- On-target earnings (OTE): $300,000 - $400,000, including base salary and variable compensation.
- Variable compensation: Paid primarily on company net-new ARR, with a portion tied to quarterly business objectives. Uncapped, with accelerators for performance above plan.
- Substantial equity in a fast-growing startup.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance.
- Flexible work environment with hybrid options.

## Why Join Scholarly

- Take on a highly visible leadership role that directly shapes the company’s growth. This role will be critical to the company’s future success.
- Work directly with the founders and senior leadership team.
- Build and lead the sales organization at an early, formative stage.
- Opportunity to grow into a broader revenue leadership role as the company scales.

## About Scholarly

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Scholarly builds modern faculty information software for higher education institutions, streamlining faculty administration with AI-powered data management and workflows.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed-stage; total funding approximately $8M as of April 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Denver, Colorado, USA (with a second office in Seattle, Washington)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Rusty Cowher (CEO) and Kelly Sutton (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Educational technology / Faculty affairs software for higher education
- **Target customers**: B2B – universities, medical schools, engineering schools, law schools, business schools, colleges of arts & science, and art schools
- **Mission or purpose**: To streamline faculty administration so faculty members can spend less time on admin tasks, while empowering institutions with the data they need to operate effectively.

## Products & Services
- **[Faculty Information System]**: A comprehensive SaaS platform that centralizes faculty data, automates annual evaluations, promotion & tenure workflows, tracks sabbaticals, and provides AI-powered reporting and dashboards. Includes a faculty public profiles module, a workflow builder, and integrations with existing university systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of ~$8M – includes a $1M pre-seed round (June 2023), a $4M seed round (July 2024), and a $3M growth capital round from existing investors (announced April 2026) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scholarly-software)).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly named; described as “leading software investors” on the company website. Partners include higher education institutions and advisory network members.
- **Growth Signals**: 69.2% year-over-year headcount growth (15 employees as of mid-2026), active hiring for 4+ roles (Senior SDR, Senior Software Engineer, Senior Implementation Manager, Head of Growth), renewed SOC 2 Type II compliance in January 2026, consistent monthly product updates with AI features (AI CV Import, AI Assistant, Model Context Protocol), and presence at industry events like the AIR Forum.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose-built for faculty affairs**: Deep domain focus on higher education administration, unlike generic HR or CRM platforms.
- **AI-powered automation**: Uses AI to reduce manual data entry (e.g., importing CVs, generating reports) and to surface actionable insights.
- **SOC 2 Type II certified**: Meets enterprise security standards required by universities.
- **Advisory network**: Engages faculty affairs administrators directly to shape product roadmap and ensure relevance.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale the team and product**: Using fresh growth capital to accelerate hiring across engineering, implementation, and growth roles.
- **Expand platform capabilities**: Continuous investment in workflows, APIs, public profile hosting, and AI features to serve a broader range of institution types and use cases.
- **Deepen market penetration**: Targeting medical, engineering, law, and business schools with tailored solutions, and expanding to colleges of arts & science and art schools.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: Influence how higher education faculty are managed and supported across top institutions.
- **Early-stage impact**: Join a 15-person team where each role has outsized ownership and visibility into the company’s strategy.
- **Collaborative culture**: Monthly product update posts and open communication on LinkedIn suggest a transparent, team-oriented environment.
- **Work model**: Hybrid – offices in Denver, CO and Seattle, WA; some roles (e.g., Senior SDR) are listed as “Denver or Remote,” while engineering roles may be based in Seattle or remote-friendly. Candidates should confirm for each position.
- **Perks & culture**: Modern tooling (e.g., Gusto, Datadog, Ashby for hiring), focus on work-life balance, and opportunities to attend industry conferences.

## Sources
1. [Scholarly Software – About Page](https://scholarlysoftware.com/about)
2. [Scholarly Software Careers Page (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Scholarly)
3. [Scholarly Software LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scholarly-software)
4. [Scholarly Software on Built In](https://builtin.com/company/scholarly-software)
5. [Scholarly Software – Homepage](https://scholarlysoftware.com/)

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