About FirstPrinciples
FirstPrinciples is building AI to accelerate scientific discovery. Our core product is the Theo Platform, a research environment built to help researchers iterate faster, validate rigorously, and reach verified results they can trust.
We're a fast-growing, remote-first team of builders, researchers, engineers, and thinkers working across Canada, the US, the UK, and expanding globally. What brings us together is a shared curiosity about how the universe works, and a belief that we can build systems that help us explore it more effectively.
We spend our time working on questions that don't have clear answers, like how to design AI that can reason through scientific problems, and how the scientific process as a whole might evolve. This is work that sits somewhere between creativity and rigorous thinking, and often requires comfort with ambiguity and iteration. If you're someone who enjoys tackling big, abstract problems and exploring ideas that don't yet have a defined path forward, you'll likely find the work here interesting.
Why This Role Exists:
We’re building products to accelerate progress in physics - but that only matters if the right researchers discover them, understand how they work, and make the decision to adopt them. Besides building the technology, the challenge is earning the trust of researchers and institutions, and translating it into active usage and commercial relationships.
This role exists to lead that journey. You’ll work across the full sales lifecycle: from identifying and reaching out to researchers and organizations, to discovery, demos, evaluations, and close. You’ll help prospective users move from curiosity, to confidence that the platform can advance their research.
Your impact will directly shape who we serve, how we bring the product to market, and how quickly we build a repeatable path to adoption and revenue.
What You’ll Do:
Rapidly develop fluency in customers’ technical domains, research programs, and scientific problems to identify where FirstPrinciples can create value
Prepare highly targeted account strategies and outreach based on a genuine understanding of the organization and its work
Build relationships and pipeline across commercial R&D teams, industry researchers, research groups, national laboratories, and other research-intensive organizations
Own the end-to-end commercial lifecycle: from prospecting and qualification, to discovery, demos, proposals, and close
Run technically credible discovery conversations and product demos that connect researchers’ goals to concrete product use cases
Help prospective customers structure pilot plans, establish success criteria, and build confidence in adopting the platform
Navigate multiple stakeholders across scientific, technical, administrative, procurement, and leadership functions
Partner closely with Research Partners throughout discovery, evaluation, onboarding, and expansion
Bring market feedback, objections, and emerging use cases back to product, research, and engineering
Build lightweight systems for outreach, qualification, account planning, CRM management, follow-up, and forecasting that can scale with the organization
Own clear pipeline, conversion, and revenue goals while helping define our early sales playbook
Who You Are:
Exceptionally curious and analytical, with the ability to rapidly develop fluency in unfamiliar technical and scientific domains
High agency and learning velocity; you’re comfortable being dropped into a complex topic, figuring it out quickly, and operating without an established playbook
Able to form strong, testable points of view from incomplete information, grounded in first-principles reasoning rather than defaulting to established frameworks
Commercially minded and excited by turning complex technology into customer relationships, adoption, and revenue
Strong communicator who asks sharp questions, listens carefully, leads credible discovery conversations, and can move an opportunity toward a decision
Comfortable initiating conversations, prospecting into new organizations, and building relationships from the ground up
Persistent and highly organized; you follow through, maintain momentum, and are comfortable being accountable for measurable commercial outcomes
You may come from sales, investing, consulting, banking, data/analytics, a technical startup, scientific commercialization, or another highly analytical environment. Traditional enterprise sales experience is not required
What You’ll Get:
The opportunity to work on foundational problems at the intersection of AI and physics
A high-trust, low-bureaucracy environment with real ownership
Remote-first work with flexibility in how you structure your day
Exposure to cutting-edge ideas across AI, scientific discovery, and emerging technologies
A culture that values curiosity, depth of thinking, and first-principles reasoning
The chance to contribute to work aimed at advancing fundamental science
Skills Required
- Exceptional curiosity and analytical ability, with capacity to learn unfamiliar technical and scientific domains quickly
- High agency, learning velocity, and comfort operating without an established playbook
- Ability to form testable points of view from incomplete information using first-principles reasoning
- Commercial mindset focused on customer relationships, adoption, and revenue
- Strong communication, discovery, listening, and opportunity-management skills
- Comfort initiating conversations, prospecting, and building relationships from the ground up
- Persistence, organization, follow-through, and accountability for measurable commercial outcomes
- Experience in sales, investing, consulting, banking, data and analytics, technical startups, scientific commercialization, or another analytical environment
What We Do
FirstPrinciples is a non-profit, AI-first research organization dedicated to understanding the fundamental nature of reality. By combining software engineering rigor with scientific curiosity, the organization is building the 'AI Physicist,' an open, autonomous research engine designed to accelerate scientific discovery. They operate as a remote-first global collective of engineers, physicists, and AI researchers, aiming to reshape how scientific research is conducted through advanced AI systems.
.png)
