Lelapa AI - US Sales & Distribution Lead

Come join Lelapa AI | Resource-Efficient Language AI Built to Scale Globally!

About Lelapa AI

Lelapa AI builds speech-to-text, machine translation, text-to-speech, diarisation, and language identification technology for low-resource and code-switched emerging-market languages. We are able to do post call speech to text as well as real time speech to text and primarily serve enterprise.

Headquartered in Delaware and a distributed team all over the world, Lelapa's enterprise customers include FNB and Voyc, and its technology reaches enterprise contact centers through distribution partnerships with CX partners.

The Role

Lelapa is hiring its first US-based commercial hire, a combined Sales & Distribution Lead responsible for two connected functions: executing and growing Lelapa's partnerships with major CX/CCaaS platforms and progressing the enterprise sales conversations that result from those partnerships. This role exists to give Lelapa a dedicated presence inside the US enterprise CX ecosystem where our channel relationships are built and where the largest multinational buyers (banks, telcos, and BPOs) source their CX stack.

This is a build role, not a maintenance role. You will be Lelapa's first commercial hire in the US, working day-to-day under the direction of the Chief Revenue Officer, who sets overall partnership and sales strategy. Lelapa is separately hiring integration engineers to support technical integration work with CX/CCaaS partners, and an Account Manager (targeted within the first three months), both of whom you'll partner with closely day to day and have a voice in selecting.

This role directly supports Lelapa's near-term revenue targets: approximately 2X converted sales growth in the first 6 months of start date, growing to 5X within 15 months of start date.

Distribution & Partnerships

• Execute and grow Lelapa's partnership relationships with CX/CCaaS platforms (starting with Genesys (AppFoundry) and CallMiner, and expanding to NICE, Verint, and Five9) under the CRO's overall partnership strategy.
• Support and help navigate ISV/marketplace listing processes co-sell agreements, and joint go-to-market planning with partner alliance teams.
• Build day-to-day relationships and presence (through partner events, insurtech/CX industry conferences, and direct engagement) that keep Lelapa visible to partner account teams working deals that touch emerging-market-language or multilingual requirements.
• Work closely with Lelapa's integration engineers to scope and prioritize technical integration work with new and existing CX/CCaaS partners.

Enterprise Sales

• Qualify, develop, and progress direct enterprise sales opportunities with banks, telcos, and BPOs that need multilingual transcription, translation, and contact-center QA at scale, sourced both through partner channels and independent outreach, with the CRO engaged on larger or more complex deals.
• Actively work Lelapa's existing CX partnership listings to build and progress a pipeline of partner-sourced opportunities.
• Support the US side of the sales cycle: discovery, proposal support, and follow-through, looping in the CRO and Johannesburg-based product and research leadership for technical validation and negotiation on larger or more complex deals.
• Maintain and report on a pipeline of partnership-sourced and direct enterprise opportunities, in partnership with the incoming Account Manager. Distribution partners are based primarily in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Cross-Functional

• Work with the Johannesburg-based product team to understand the upcoming product roadmap and language/feature coverage, so that partnership and sales positioning stays aligned with what Lelapa can credibly commit to.
• Act as Lelapa's front door in the US. Representing the company at industry events and in partner conversations and feeding market and competitive intelligence back to the CRO and product team.
• Participate in the selection and onboarding of Lelapa's incoming integration engineers and Account Manager.

What Success Looks Like (First 180 Days)

• Meaningful progress toward integration with two additional CX/CCaaS partners working alongside the CRO and integration engineers.
• A qualified pipeline identified, with early pilot or negotiation conversations underway with at least one new partner.
• Qualified opportunities actively being sourced and progressed through Lelapa's existing CX platform listings.

What You Bring

• 2–4 years in enterprise software sales, partnerships, or channel/alliance management — ideally with some exposure to contact-center, CX, or CCaaS platforms, financial-services or telco enterprise software, or adjacent enterprise SaaS.
• Some experience supporting or navigating ISV partnership or marketplace programs (e.g. with a CCaaS, CRM, or major platform vendor) or progressing multi-stakeholder enterprise sales conversations.
• Comfort operating as a generalist early commercial hire. This role blends partnership execution and direct sales, working alongside integration and account-management support and under CRO direction, rather than building or running your own team.
• Based in or willing to be based in the Connecticut area, with the flexibility to travel to partner/customer sites as needed (Generally within 3 hrs of Stamford)
• Comfortable working closely with a product and research team based in Johannesburg, across time zones, as the source of deep technical and market expertise.

Nice to Have

• Existing relationships with partnership, alliance, or ISV teams at Genesys, CallMiner, NICE, Verint, or Five9 (not required, but a strong plus).
• Experience selling into regulated, compliance-heavy verticals (banking, insurance, telco).
• Familiarity with multilingual or global contact-center operations, or with vendor ecosystems serving emerging markets.

Compensation

Base salary: $85,000–$100,000 per year, plus a variable OTE/commission component tied to closed and partner-sourced revenue, structured to bring total on-target compensation meaningfully above base for a rep who hits pipeline and progression targets. This is complemented by an equity grant reflecting the opportunity of being Lelapa's first US commercial hire. Exact equity grant and commission plan details to be finalized with final candidate.

Why This Role

This is a rare opportunity to be part of building a company's US commercial function from the ground up, working closely with the CRO and founding team, inside one of the fastest-growing categories in enterprise AI. You'll help connect Lelapa's deep language-AI research and product work in Johannesburg to the enterprise CX buyers and platforms that will bring it to a global market with real, hands-on exposure to partnership strategy and enterprise sales, and a team building around you.

Lelapa AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Naboo is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical and mental disabilities