Education Account Executive

About this role

Education Account Executive | Zero Gravity | London-Hybrid | £76,500 - £102,000 OTE
Who Zero Gravity are
Zero Gravity is a tech platform connecting students from low-income backgrounds to university and career opportunities - over 23,000 students supported into top universities to date. In April 2026 they launched an AI-powered tutor, already showing strong early engagement and attainment results, and have since won a government contract to scale it across the UK.
EQL Tech is Zero Gravity's exclusive recruitment partner for this search - all applications and enquiries for this role are handled by EQL Tech on Zero Gravity's behalf.
The role
Zero Gravity is bringing AI-powered tutoring into schools that have never had access to it - and they need someone who can walk into a headteacher's office and make the case in person, not just on a slide. This is a new-business sales role where the product genuinely changes outcomes for kids, which makes it a very different sell to most SaaS AE roles: you're not just closing a deal, you're getting a school to trust something new with their students. You sell on trust here, not pressure - every school's specifics are different, but the underlying pain is usually the same once you know how to spot it.
You'll run full sales cycles end to end - from a cold conversation with a head of department through to a signed multi-academy trust, where the deal changes shape entirely: bigger, multi-threaded, and capable of unlocking dozens of schools off the back of one relationship done well. Most days start with several in-person meetings, which means this role rewards someone who'd rather be in a school than on a fourth Zoom call of the morning.
It also sits closer to product than a typical sales role. What you hear on the ground - what schools actually push back on, what makes them say yes - feeds straight back into how the product and go-to-market evolve.
Mission comes before everything else here. Zero Gravity doesn't treat “passionate about education” as a nice-to-have on a CV - they need someone who genuinely believes in what a school stands to gain, because a rep who doesn't buy it gets read instantly by a headteacher, and it shows up in the numbers within a quarter. That conviction is weighted equally with sales track record, not a tie-breaker between two similar candidates.
What you'll actually be doing

• Becoming a name schools trust before you've even walked through the door - leading every conversation with real, current knowledge of how AI actually improves student outcomes, not a rehearsed pitch

• Running 3-5 sharp, well-qualified new-business meetings a day with Heads of Department and senior leadership teams

• Running fast, full-cycle deals - discovery call, demo, follow-up, close - and not letting any of them go stale in the gaps

• Growing a single school relationship into a Multi-Academy Trust or local-authority deal, where one conversation done well can open the door to dozens of schools at once

• Carrying a steady cadence of inbound leads while helping crack outbound from scratch - working out who the real school ICP is, where they actually are, and which channels genuinely reach them

• Helping build the automated GTM machinery - standardised follow-ups, one-pagers, decks - so the repeatable parts of the job run themselves and your time goes into the relationships that actually need a human

• Handing schools over cleanly to Account Managers post-signature, so the first term goes well rather than just closing and moving on

• Bringing structured feedback from teachers and school leaders straight back into product and marketing, so the pitch and the product both get sharper every week
Where you'll be
Central London, 3 days/week in the office, with regular in-person school visits across the rest of the week.
Requirements
Who we're looking for
Non-negotiable

• Genuine, demonstrable belief in the mission - closing the gap between talent and opportunity for young people the system has overlooked. Weighted equally with the criteria below, not a tie-breaker.

• UK-based, with the right to work here without sponsorship - daily in-person school visits make remote or overseas working impossible

• A track record of carrying and hitting a new-business number, in EdTech or another relationship-led sales environment

• Genuine fluency in how schools actually work, not just sales-speak about them - a teaching background is a strong plus, not a requirement

• Comfortable building the process as you go, in a startup that's still figuring some of this out

• Real, hands-on interest in what AI can (and can't yet) do in a classroom - you can go three levels deeper than the marketing copy

• You don't need to be technical, but you genuinely need to care about the outcome for the kids in the room - that's what tells a headteacher this isn't just another vendor pitch
Strong signal, not a requirement

• Direct experience selling into schools, MATs, or local authorities

• Time spent actually teaching or working inside a school

• Experience taking a product from a handful of logos to a repeatable GTM motion
Benefits
Compensation, benefits & culture

• £45,000-£60,000 base, £76,500-£102,000 OTE

• Central London, hybrid (3 days/week in office) plus school visits

• A sales role where the product is genuinely hard to argue with once a school sees it

• Share options - genuine ownership in the business, not a token gesture

• Private healthcare, including dental and mental health support, plus gym discounts

• An annual personal-development allowance to spend on your own growth

• Equipment set up so you can do your best work from day one

• Fortnightly team socials on the house, plus bigger quarterly events

• 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, with extra days off over the Christmas shutdown

Values aren't a poster on the wall here - they're genuinely what holds the team, members, partners, donors and investors together as one community, and it shows up in…