The Role
As an Account Executive, you will manage the full sales cycle, building relationships, conducting demos, and helping schools partner with Zen Educate to reduce costs.
Summary Generated by Built In
Role: Account Executive
Location: London, on-site during term time
Salary: £40,000 - 50,000k OTE (uncapped commission)
👋 Hi, I’m Jordan, Head of New Business at Zen Educate
…and I’m looking for Senior Account Executives who want to take on a big challenge: helping schools save millions by changing how they hire, vet, upskill and retain their teaching staff.
If you love building relationships with senior leaders, closing deals, and making a genuine difference in education — this might be the perfect next step for you.
🌍 What we’re building (and why it matters)
Here’s the problem:
UK schools spend over £2 billion a year on temporary staff — and £600 million of that goes straight to recruitment agencies. That’s money that could be paying teachers more or funding new classroom resources.
At Zen Educate, we’re fixing that.
We’ve built an online platform that connects schools directly with fully vetted teachers and support staff — cutting out agencies and saving schools money - and a game-changing suite of software tools that revolutionises their processes.
Since launching in 2017, we’ve already saved schools over £30 million that’s gone straight back into classrooms. We recently raised $37 million in Series B funding (the biggest EdTech round in Europe last year!) and we’re scaling fast in the UK and US. 🚀
Now we’re growing our New Business team — and we need senior sales professionals who can help us win and grow strategic school partnerships across the UK.
💼 What this role looks like day-to-day
This isn’t your typical “call some leads and move on” kind of sales job.
As a Account Executive, you’ll own the full sales cycle — from outreach and discovery through to activation, scale, and renewal.
You’ll focus on high-value, high-impact school partnerships, building long-term relationships with school leaders and helping them see the value of working with Zen.
Here’s what your week might look like:
Have a discovery call with a Headteacher about moving their entire supply spend to Zen.
- Visit a school to demo our Zen+ platform and show how it can save them time and money.
- Follow up with an existing school to expand their usage and close a Preferred Supplier Agreement (PSA).
- Collaborate with Account Managers and the Trusts team to coordinate multi-school rollouts.
- Share feedback with our Product team on what schools love (and what we can improve).
- Join a quick brainstorm with the sales team on how to approach a new regional opportunity.
It’s fast-paced, hands-on, and full of variety. You’ll be a key part of shaping how we grow.
🙌 Who you are
You don’t need to have worked in education before — we’ll teach you that. But we think you’ll thrive if you’re:
- A strong consultative seller who loves complex, relationship-driven sales cycles.
- Experienced in B2B or SaaS sales — ideally closing five- or six-figure deals.
- Someone who enjoys picking up the phone, getting creative with outreach, and building genuine connections.
- Strategic and commercially minded — you can see both the mission and the numbers.
- Confident presenting to senior decision-makers and managing multiple stakeholders.
- A self-starter who loves autonomy but knows when to collaborate.
- Passionate about doing work that actually matters.
💡 What you might like (and what might not be your thing)
✅ You might love this role if:
- You want to combine serious commercial impact with a meaningful mission.
- You like selling products that make a tangible difference to people’s lives.
- You thrive in fast-paced, scaling environments where things are always improving.
🤔 You might find it tricky if:
- You prefer a highly structured corporate environment with set processes.
- You’re not comfortable with outreach and leading sales conversations.
- You want every week to look the same — this role evolves constantly.
🎁 What’s in it for you
- Meaningful work — every deal you close helps schools save money and teachers get paid more.
- Competitive salary + commission + equity.
- 25 days holiday + all UK public holidays.
- Hybrid working (outside of term time) — we have a central London office with gym, showers, café, and cycle parking.
- 1:1 coaching and professional development support.
- Life & Health Insurance, Cycle to Work Scheme, Electric Car Scheme.
🌱 How we hire
We like to move quickly and keep things simple:
Intro chat – A short conversation with our recruiter.
Sales interview – Let’s talk about your approach to prospecting, discovery, and closing.
Practical task & role play – Show us how you’d run a realistic school meeting.
Culture chat – Meet the wider team and make sure it’s a great fit both ways.
If it’s a yes, we’ll let you know fast — no endless waiting around.
💜 Diversity & inclusion
At Zen, we strive to build a culture of equity and inclusion, where everyone is respected, valued and appreciated for their unique traits, experiences and perspectives. We are committed to creating a safe, inclusive and equitable environment where our team can thrive, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, religion or beliefs. We value our differences and believe that practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion help us create a fairer, more compassionate environment for all.
We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds and different experiences and perspectives, just like the staff who teach through Zen and the children at the schools we work with. We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool and creating an inclusive culture where people’s voices are heard and all our team can look forward to coming to work.
We are committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of our community and promoting an equitable and inclusive environment for all. We seek out diverse opinions, beliefs, and experiences because they collectively make us stronger; we’ve had former teachers, pilots, fundraisers, engineers, lawyers, marketers, social media experts and more join our team.
🚀 Ready to make a difference?
If this sounds like you — if you’re excited by the idea of helping schools save millions and improving education at scale — hit Apply. We’d love to chat.
Top Skills
SaaS
Am I A Good Fit?
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.
Success! Refresh the page to see how your skills align with this role.
The Company
What We Do
At Zen our mission is to change the world of education recruitment. Schools spend over £2bn a year on agency staff, with over £600m per year of that spent on fees that go straight to recruitment agencies. So far, we've saved UK schools over £14m in supply teaching recruitment costs, and that number grows every day, allowing schools to invest further into children’s wellbeing and attainment.
We're not just redefining recruitment; we’re upskilling our supply staff to provide the highest quality teachers and TAs to schools. Each supply staff member is Level 2 Safeguarding trained, guaranteeing the safety and wellbeing of children in your school.
Using our online platform, schools can access hundreds of fully vetted high-quality teacher & TA profiles, who they can book instantly at the click of a button. We don't stop at just providing a platform – we have a dedicated school success team here to support you every step of the way. When you succeed, we succeed!
