Account Director Senior - NeoCloud Enterprise (Remote, US)

About this role

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI‑powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through our expansive fiber network and connected ecosystem. We enable secure, high‑performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities.
At Lumen, you’ll work on infrastructure customers rely on today and build for what’s next, where performance, security, and resilience matter.
This is a high accountability environment where bold ideas drive real innovation for our customers, partners, and industry. The work is challenging, expectations are clear, and trust is built into how we operate. If you’re ready to take ownership, deliver meaningful impact, and help shape the future of AI‑ready connectivity, join us today.

The Role

Own growth across large, important, and potentially global enterprise accounts by translating customer business priorities into measurable outcomes enabled by Lumen’s network, cloud, security, managed services, and orchestration portfolio.

As the senior commercial lead, you operate independently from acquisition through modernization, activation, adoption, consumption, and expansion. You set account strategy, shape and negotiate commercial terms, mobilize cross-functional resources, and advise executive stakeholders. Your broad command of customer economics, markets, technology, and complex buying environments makes you a trusted expert to customers and colleagues.

The Main Responsibilities

• Own and execute a self-directed strategy for a portfolio of large, important, or global accounts, grounded in each customer’s business model, financial priorities, operating risks, technology estate, market context, and competitive position.

• Anticipate needs before they become formal requirements; develop points of view and use cases that connect modernization to growth, efficiency, resilience, risk reduction, and innovation.

• Build qualified pipeline through executive relationships, account intelligence, focused prospecting, partners, marketing, and business development.

• Prioritize investments and resources based on customer potential, solution fit, buying signals, competitive dynamics, and revenue opportunity.

• Lead discovery across executive, business, technical, operational, and financial stakeholders to define the problem, value at stake, decision path, and urgency to act.

• Integrate relevant capabilities across Lumen and its partners into a coherent outcome; direct architects and specialists through clear commercial and customer objectives while they own technical design and validation.

• Build quantified business cases covering expected value, investment, implementation requirements, risk, and cost of inaction.

• Develop customers’ and colleagues’ understanding of business, market, and solution tradeoffs; influence executive sponsors, economic buyers, technical decision makers, and internal champions.

• Own new-logo acquisition and expansion against assigned sales, revenue, and consumption goals.

• Lead complex, high-value sales cycles through qualification, validation, pricing, negotiation, procurement, legal review, and close.

• Exercise substantial commercial discretion—and, within company governance, full authority to shape and negotiate product, service, pricing, and contract terms.

• Establish mutual action plans, decision criteria, stakeholder commitments, milestones, and activation dates; surface risks and dependencies early.

• Plan and manage the account resource model, mobilizing sales, technical, delivery, customer success, channel, and partner teams without relying on formal authority.

• Retain commercial ownership through implementation and activation; hold downstream partners accountable for customer readiness, delivery commitments, adoption, and value realization.

• Use consumption data and customer signals to remove adoption barriers, address underutilization, anticipate revenue risk, and identify expansion across workloads, locations, and business units.

• Convert demonstrated value into modernization, additional use cases, broader executive relationships, recurring revenue, and sustained growth.

• Serve as a recognized expert across business, financial, market, customer, and portfolio domains; coach peers and contribute account insight that improves sales approaches and solution fit.

• Activate channel and technology partners through joint targeting, account planning, and selling, with clear ownership and measurable outcomes.

• Use AI, agents, and automated workflows to improve research, prioritization, outreach, follow-through, and opportunity management; validate outputs and apply sound judgment.

• Maintain rigorous qualification, stakeholder maps, next steps, forecasts, and CRM records.

What We Look For in a Candidate

• 8+ years of enterprise sales experience and sustained quota achievement, with evidence of performance at the scope and complexity described above.

• Success acquiring and expanding large, important, or global enterprise accounts and closing complex deals with multimillion-dollar total contract value.

• Broad expertise across customer business and financial drivers, enterprise technology markets, complex buying environments, and relevant solutions such as networking, cloud, security, managed services, or enterprise software.

• Demonstrated authority and judgment in structuring and negotiating complex product, service, pricing, and contract terms with senior customer leaders.

• Technical fluency to lead credible discovery, recognize solution opportunities, and direct architects and specialists effectively.

• Experience planning account strategy independently and orchestrating colleagues and partners across the full customer lifecycle without formal authority.

• Understanding of recurring-revenue and consumption-based models, including how activation, adoption, and usage create customer value and revenue growth.

• Practical experience using AI and…