The Role
Own and build a new expansion sales motion focused on cross-selling products and expanding into existing customers’ geographies and subsidiaries. Design pipeline tracking, forecasting, and reporting; partner with Finance, RevOps, Marketing, and outreach support; and manage strategic, high-value deals. The role requires full-cycle sales ability, commercial and data literacy, strong judgment, cross-functional influence, and comfort building processes from scratch in an ambiguous environment.
Summary Generated by Built In
🌍 About the Role
At Zinc, we're rapidly technologising how we serve candidates, recruiters, and customers, without eroding what makes our service genuinely good. The Expansion Lead is a new, senior individual-contributor hire reporting to Rakeem, and will be brought in to own a £30M+ expansion opportunity (cross-sell into existing accounts and geo/subsidiary growth) that's currently unowned. This role exists to build and run that motion directly and to spot more expansion opportunities within the renewal conversations the Account Management team are already having.
We're looking for someone who's built a sales motion from scratch before: commercially sharp, hands-on, and just as comfortable shaping strategy as closing a deal themselves. You'll own expansion revenue across cross-sell and geographic growth, addressing a pipeline that today goes largely unclaimed because our account management team, focused on retention, doesn't have the capacity to chase it proactively.
🚀 Growth trajectory
This is a build role. If it proves out, it becomes the seed of a wider Customer Revenue Growth team spanning upsell, cross-sell and expansion. We're starting narrow on purpose (a small number of clearly defined plays, broadened as they prove out).
🧩 The Complexity (why this role isn't for everyone)
- No existing playbook, team or pipeline to inherit: you're proving a brand new commercial motion.
- Real judgement required: expansion into new markets or subsidiaries needs careful handling so it doesn't put existing customer relationships at risk.
- Influence without full authority: you'll work closely with Marketing and an outreach partner.
- The role's future shape is genuinely open — it could stay a single senior IC plus outreach support, or grow into a wider team.
Key Responsibilities 🗝️
🌐 Own expansion, directly
Own two growth plays: cross-sell (new products into existing accounts) and geographic/subsidiary expansion (opening up new markets within accounts we already serve). Volume-driven, market-led upsell stays with the AM team as part of renewals; this role is about the pipeline nobody currently owns.
🧭 Build how pipeline gets tracked
Design how expansion pipeline gets built, tracked and reported, and keep forecasting reliable in partnership with Finance and RevOps.
🧑🤝🧑 Partner with a dedicated outreach hire
Work alongside a paired outreach role that handles prospecting volume, so you can stay focused on strategy and the highest-value conversations rather than volume outbound.
🌱 Partner with marketing
Work with Marketing on lifecycle campaigns (usage triggers, NPS, engagement signals) that scale outreach without replacing genuine, relationship-led conversations.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise 🚀
🚀 Hard skills
- Full-cycle sales experience: has run a complete sales motion before, from strategy through to closing, not just managed one that already existed.
- Data-literate and commercially numerate: comfortable reading benchmarking data, sizing opportunity and building a forecasting model with Finance.
- Pipeline and mechanism design: able to design how pipeline gets built, tracked and reported, ideally with RevOps support.
- Cross-functional delivery: gets real output from Marketing and an outreach partner without owning either function directly.
- Risk judgement on complex deals: able to spot when an expansion opportunity needs careful sequencing to protect the wider account.
💡 Soft skills
- Builder, not inheritor: genuinely energised by standing up something from nothing.
- Collaborative without authority: motivates others to prioritise this work alongside their day job.
- Strategic and hands-on in the same week: equally comfortable shaping strategy and getting into an individual deal or coaching conversation.
- Drives visibility: makes sure the business notices and keeps investing in this work.
- Comfortable with ambiguity: the shape of this role, and what it becomes if it works, isn't fixed yet.
What we offer 🍉
- 24 days holiday + Bank Holidays + your birthday off 🎉
- £1200 annual benefits allowance (ThanksBen, from month 2)
- Early finish Fridays (16:00)
- Yearly company retreat abroad ✈️
- 30 days to Work from anywhere 🌍
- Enhanced Maternity, Paternity, and Adoption Leave (13 weeks full pay, 17 weeks half pay, then SMP for maternity, 1 month full pay for paternity/adoption) 🐣
- Statutory pension with NEST (3% employer, 5% employee)
- Zinc shares, issued through the EMI Scheme
- Unlimited access to Spill Therapy
- Company socials, quarterly team socials Free Monday lunches
- Nursery workplace benefit scheme (Yellownest)
- Option to lease an electric car through Electric Car Scheme
- Celebrated Zinc anniversaries 🥳
About
Who are Zinc? ⚡️We believe in better background checking: making them easy, instant and delightful - for candidates and HR teams across the world 🌎. Founded in 2017, we've grown year-on-year, reaching the Times Top 100 fastest growing businesses, the Deloitte EMEA fast 500 and winning the 2026 HSBC x WIRED Award in the Trailblazers Category.But we're not all work, our founders Luke and Charlotte are hot on being a culture first business. By this, we don't just mean an active calendar of company and team events (although these are great! 🍻 🥂🍕🎯) - our culture is defined by respect, fostering support for new ideas, promoting flexible work environments and operating with autonomy and low ego. 🔥💥❤️It's not just us who think they've done a stellar job - we've won awards for being a Top Place To Work in 2025 and 2026 from Tembo and SeedLegals 💚What are our values? 🧩🧩🧩Our values are: Pragmatism, Integrity, Empathy, Collaboration, Empowerment and Speed. We call them the PIECES that make Zinc (see what we did there 😂).How do we work? 🧑🏽💻👩🏼💻👨🏿💻We operate on a hybrid working model, with everyone coming to our Shoreditch Offices on Mondays and Thursdays, and working from home on the others. We believe this is a great balance between having space for deep work and in-person collaboration ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Skills Required
- Full-cycle sales experience, from strategy through closing
- Experience building a sales motion from scratch
- Ability to analyze benchmarking data, size opportunities, and build forecasting models
- Ability to design pipeline-building, tracking, and reporting mechanisms
- Experience delivering cross-functionally with Marketing and outreach partners
- Strong judgment handling complex expansion deals and protecting customer relationships
- Ability to work strategically while remaining hands-on with deals and coaching
- Comfort working collaboratively without direct authority and in ambiguous environments
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The Company
What We Do
Zinc builds automated reference and background checking tools designed to improve candidate experience and set new industry standards, offering automated pre-screening employment software for HR and recruiting teams to verify candidates' backgrounds and hire at scale.
