Senior Sales Manager, Digital Native, Japan (Based in Tokyo)

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

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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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