If you have built a mature ocean freight book across the Pacific Trade and you are auditing where that book belongs for the next five years, this role offers the operational fabric, the carrier relationships, and the equity structure that recognize what a senior portfolio is actually worth.
About Skypace
Skypace serves shippers whose freight programs depend on consistent execution across repeated ocean movements, multiple service providers, and constant commercial pressure on cost, timing, and space allocation. For these companies, performance is shaped by how systematically pricing, allocation, and milestone visibility move alongside the shipment itself.
Skypace demonstrates a global operating environment where this coordination is built into the workflow as a structural standard. Shippers, carriers, drayage providers, and internal teams operate through a shared data structure that accumulates context, supports timely decisions, and preserves the operational record across the shipment lifecycle.
Today, this model supports more than 150 customers across 18 countries through direct integrations with top 10 ocean carriers, among them MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, COSCO, and Hapag-Lloyd. The operating environment optimizes shipper performance across freight cost, communication discipline, error reduction, booking speed, and visibility into how each participating party performs against commitment.
Operational data accumulates as a clean, structured record that supports continuous process improvement today and becomes foundational as supply chains integrate AI-driven decision agents into planning, execution, and exception handling.
How the operation runs
Skypace operates on a proactive monitoring discipline. Milestones are tracked through live data across the entire shipment ecosystem. Deviations in schedule, cost, or capacity surface within the operating environment, and the next operational action is initiated by Skypace before the client encounters the problem.
The instant-quote and online booking engine compresses commercial response time from days to minutes. Carrier MQC commitments hold during peak season, which is the period when allocation decides whether a shipper's seasonal cycle preserves its margin or absorbs unplanned cost.
The quote engine surfaces every accessorial at the quote stage, including peak surcharges, GRI, port congestion fees, drayage components, and reefer plug charges where applicable. The number the client sees at quote stands on the invoice. Pricing integrity is treated as a commercial discipline, not a service feature.
Why this role exists
This role leads senior commercial coverage of Skypace's Pacific Trade portfolio in California, across machinery, electrical, paper, furniture, plastics, ceramics, and wood products. Senior coverage at Skypace combines portfolio activation, retention discipline, and operational influence over the platform's commercial roadmap.
What the role holds
The role manages a transitioning portfolio with full Year 1 sunset rate on every originated account. Sunset rates continue across Year 2 and Year 3+ even when day-to-day account management transfers to operations, which recognizes that senior commercial relationships compound through retention. A 90-day transition plan is co-designed before signing, accounts mapped by lane, decision-maker access, current pain pattern, and required operational cadence.
Beyond portfolio retention, the role leads strategic California account development across the same commodity verticals where the senior's existing expertise has compounding value. Cross-functional input on platform development is part of the work: client-facing observations reach the product team within the same week, and renewal-critical features enter the roadmap inside the quarter.
Mentorship of one or two junior sales representatives typically begins month nine to twelve, once the senior's own portfolio is established. The role represents Skypace's protection of senior commercial interests through transparent attribution, locked sunset rates, and freight audit defense across the lifecycle of every originated relationship.
You are the right candidate if
You bring 7+ years of ocean freight sales experience at one or more forwarders, NVOCCs, or 3PLs with established California or West Coast presence, including portfolio leadership at the trade-lane level.
You hold a book that has compounded through retention, a meaningful share of annual gross profit comes from accounts owned for twenty-four months or longer.
You operate with the operational fluency of a senior commercial professional: carrier contract structure, MQC commitments, D&D mitigation strategy, customs liability ownership, freight audit logic, claims documentation discipline.
You hold decision-maker access at the top of your accounts, supply chain VPs, operations directors, owner-operators, not procurement contacts alone.
You can describe, at operational specificity, what your top clients value in their forwarder relationship and what pattern of work supports their retention.
Compensation
Base salary: $150,000 – $200,000. Final base reflects portfolio size and transition plan, finalized before signing
Commission Year 1: 15–20% of gross profit, no cap. Rate determined by portfolio scope and ramp commitment
Sunset rates: 12% (Year 2), 7% (Year 3+). Locked attribution across the lifecycle of originated accounts
Annual bonus accelerator: 10% of GP on three highest GP months. Distributed by February 1 of the following year
Phantom equity: up to 2.0% across four tranches. Tied to gross profit milestones, separate plan document
Title progression: Senior Sales Manager → Director of Sales. 12-month review against portfolio growth and commercial leadership
Benefits: medical, vision, dental (50% employer-paid) + 401(k). Full-time W-2 employment
