Senior Sales Manager, Digital Native, Japan (Based in Tokyo)
CloudflareRole Description & Requirements
About Us
At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.
At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.
Available Locations: Tokyo, Japan
About the Role
Japan's digital-native ecosystem — companies born in the cloud, engineering-led, and scaling globally — represents one of the fastest-growing segments in our market. We are building a dedicated Digital Native Business (DNB) sales motion to serve these accounts: companies like leading marketplace platforms, fintech innovators, gaming studios, SaaS providers, and AI-native startups that think API-first and ship continuously.
You will lead a team of Account Executives focused exclusively on digital-native accounts in Japan, coaching them to win deals at companies.
The ideal candidate is a player-coach and builder: someone who has personally hunted and won digital-native logos, and who can attract, hire, and develop a team of self-sourcing hunters to do the same. You will operate at the intersection of Japanese B2B culture and a fast-moving global HQ, advocating for your team and your customers with equal intensity.
This role reports to the Head of Territory Sales, Japan.
Responsibilities
- Build the DNB team from the ground up: own recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and ramping a team of Account Executives dedicated to digital-native accounts.
- Meet or exceed quarterly and annual team revenue targets through a self-sourced, hunting-led pipeline motion.
- Player-coach: personally open doors at strategic accounts, model consultative and technical selling, and close alongside your AEs when needed.
- Define and iterate the DNB sales playbook
- Coach technical and consultative selling: train AEs to engage technical buyers (SRE, Platform Engineering, Security, CTO) with credibility.
- Install pipeline and forecast discipline: implement and enforce a methodology (e.g., MEDDPICC) across the team to ensure accurate forecasting and deal progression.
- Partner cross-functionally: work closely with Solution Engineering, Product, Customer Success, Marketing, and BDR to align GTM motions for digital-native accounts.
- Manage contract negotiations and Salesforce reporting.
Required Qualifications
- You have built or scaled a sales team or segment from scratch with direct experience selling to digital-native, engineering-led, or cloud-native companies.
- Player-Coach, you can prospect, run a technical discovery, and close — not just manage from the sidelines.
- Proven track record of attracting, hiring, and developing top sales talent, especially hunters.
- Working-level English to collaborate with and advocate to global HQ.
- Pipeline and forecast experience driving deal qualification methodology (MEDDPICC or equivalent) across a team.
- Coaching technical selling: Ability to train reps on selling to technical personas (SRE / Platform / Security / CTO) and navigating "build vs. buy" objections.
Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
- Sold to or managed a team selling to Japanese digital natives at an edge, CDN, security, cloud, or infrastructure SaaS vendor
- Technical appreciation of infrastructure, security, CDN, observability, or developer platforms
- Experience building or scaling a Japan sales team at a high-growth technology company
What Makes Cloudflare Special?
We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.
Project Galileo: Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.
Athenian Project: In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.
1.1.1.1: We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.
Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!
Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.
This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.
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