Account Executive, SMB, German-speaking

Join Shopify's DACH SMB team as an Account Executive focused on acquiring new D2C merchants.

You'll work directly with founders, business owners, and fast-growing brands across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, generally within the $1 million to $5 million GMV segment, helping them launch, scale, or transform their commerce operations with Shopify.

This is a full-cycle, high-velocity acquisition role.

You'll create your own pipeline, run sharp discovery and qualification, build relevant business cases, and own the sales process from first outreach through negotiation and signature.

Success here requires outbound excellence, high agency, strong product fluency, and disciplined execution.

You'll identify the right merchants, understand their growth priorities, and connect their needs to Shopify's commerce platform, checkout, payments, and international capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify and win net-new D2C merchants across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
• Generate pipeline through high-volume, high-quality outbound across calls, email, social, events, partners, and your own network.
• Engage founders, business owners, and commerce leaders to understand their goals, challenges, and growth plans.
• Run structured discovery and qualification to establish merchant fit, business need, decision process, and timing.
• Identify commerce transformation triggers: checkout performance, international expansion, platform limitations, operational complexity, and total cost of ownership.
• Position the right Shopify capabilities across the core platform, Shopify Plus, Checkout, Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, Markets, and the partner ecosystem.
• Own the complete sales cycle from prospecting through commercial negotiation and signature, with clear next steps and strong momentum.
• Build and maintain a healthy pipeline, prioritize the highest-potential opportunities, and forecast accurately.
• Collaborate with Sales Development, Solutions Engineering, Partnerships, and Marketing to improve merchant outcomes.
• Build productive relationships with agencies and technology partners across the DACH commerce ecosystem.
• Operate with discipline in CRM and sales tools: pipeline hygiene, opportunity documentation, current next steps.
• Leverage (and build your own) AI agents to improve research, outreach quality, merchant preparation, and deal execution.
• Test new approaches, document what works, and contribute to Shopify's DACH SMB acquisition playbook.
• Travel within DACH for merchant meetings, partner engagements, and industry events.

Qualifications

• Native or fluent German and professional English are required. You are comfortable selling to German founders and business owners in German.
• Proven success in a full-cycle closing role in B2B Saa S, commerce, or another competitive technology environment.
• Strong outbound prospecting skills: you build your own pipeline instead of waiting for inbound.
• Comfortable in a high-volume, high-velocity sales environment while maintaining strong discovery, qualification, and follow-through.
• A consistent track record of achieving or exceeding new business targets.
• Consultative selling skills: you uncover merchant needs, quantify business impact, and recommend the right solution.
• Confident commercial negotiation with a focus on win-win outcomes.
• Strong pipeline management, forecasting, and organizational discipline.
• Comfort learning technical product depth and working with Solution Engineers when deeper validation is required.
• High agency, resilience, and a builder mindset: you take ownership, improve playbooks, and stay effective as priorities change.
• Bonus
• Familiarity with the DACH ecommerce ecosystem, commerce platforms, agencies, or technology partners.
• Experience selling ecommerce, payments, retail technology, or Saa S solutions.
• Experience sourcing, influencing, or co-selling opportunities with partners.
• What we’re looking for in salespeople
• Builder mindset

You don’t just follow a playbook—you improve it. You test, iterate, document, and scale what works.

Closing discipline

You’ve owned outcomes and can run a process forward with urgency and rigor (closing experience required for AE roles).

Outbound excellence

You proactively create a pipeline through high-intent outreach across channels (calls, email, social, events, partners).

Technical sales craft

You run structured discovery, quantify impact, build mutual plans, and maintain strong CRM hygiene/forecasting.

Execution intensity

You bring pace, resilience, competitiveness, and the ability to take a hit and keep going.

High agency

You default to action, take ownership, and don’t wait to be told.

Thrive in ambiguity + change

You stay effective when priorities shift, products evolve, and you’re building while selling.

Partner ecosystem experience

You’ve sourced, influenced, or co-sold deals with partners (agencies, SIs, ISVs, referral partners).

System-to-system / integration exposure

You can confidently sell into technical requirements (APIs, ERPs, POS, middleware) alongside Solution Engineers.

How we work

Shopify rewards builders with high agency.

You’ll have real autonomy, high standards, and a fast pace.

We iterate, we challenge each other, and we expect you to take ownership of outcomes—not wait for perfect conditions.

If you want comfort and certainty, this won’t fit.

If you want responsibility and growth, it will.

About Shopify

Opportunity is not evenly distributed.

Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business.

We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential.

Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.

This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own.

This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.

About you

Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos.

Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable.

That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.

Before you apply, consider if you can

• Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
• Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
• Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
• Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
• Bring critical thought and opinion
• Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do
• Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
• Work digital-first for your daily work

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.

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