TL;DR
Learn what life is like for a Braze Account Executive (AE) in our Berlin office. From collaboration and cross-team partnerships to strategy and execution, this piece follows Marissa Fuchs, an AE in Berlin as she shares her journey and how to stand out at Braze in this kind of role.
Key takeaways
- The AE role at Braze is fundamentally a collaborative one, with Sales team members working with nearly every team at Braze, including BDRs, Customer Experience, Marketing, Legal, Solutions Consulting, Finance, and more
- For an AE, work breaks down into four categories: Deals, pipeline generation, account management, and customer work
At Braze, Account Executives (AEs) play a central role in supporting brands as they work to build strong, sustainable relationships with their customers. But what goes into that work—and how do AEs at Braze work collaboratively to connect with and support brands around the world?
To explore the ins-and-outs of life as a Braze AE, we sat down with Marissa Fuchs. Marissa joined Braze in May 2022 as a Tech Partnerships Manager, building the company's regional partner program from the ground up. Four years later, she's now an Emerging Enterprise Account Executive on the Berlin Sales team. What happened in between is a pretty good answer to two questions: What does career growth look like inside the Braze Revenue team? And what’s it like to work as an account executive once you're in the role?
Read on to hear Marissa talk through what the job is really like day to day in Berlin, the decisions behind each career move, her work as part of our Elle@Braze employee resource group (ERG), and what it takes to be a great account executive.
Life as a Braze account executive in Berlin
What does a typical day look like for an AE in Berlin?
There isn't one, and that's by design. No two days look the same if you're working in Sales at Braze. On a given day, I might be at the office with my team and manager, traveling to a customer or industry event, or working from home. I have the flexibility to structure my week around what the job and my life actually need.
But while there’s a lot of variety, I have found there are some common threads in the work I do. In general, I focus on four categories of work: Deals, pipeline generation, account management, and customer work. Some weeks are really intense; others are more balanced. I think of it like being a professional athlete, where you need to push hard, but you also need to build in time to rest and recover.
Who does a Braze account executive collaborate with?
Almost everyone. I really can't win at Braze if I don't collaborate, and I mean that literally: No day goes by without working alongside another team. Internally, I lean on business development representatives (BDRs), Customer Success, Marketing, Legal, Solutions Consultants, the Business Value team, Finance, the Deal Desk team, Customer Support, and both service and technical partners.
Externally, I sit between Braze and the market. Part of my job is bringing customer and market context back into the company, and bringing the Braze POV back out to customers. I think of it as a “rising tide lifts all boats” dynamic: The more I collaborate, the more everyone around me wins, too.
What's a win that you’re proud of?
For me, one of the standout moments of my career at Braze was the day I closed a major European airline.
It was the first airline partnership I'd built, and it was exciting to realize that my work would help the company more effectively reach millions of travelers on their travel days through our customer engagement platform. The opportunity also arrived as one of my first stretch accounts, which means it sat outside my usual area of focus and was handed to me by leadership as a chance to grow into my next role.
The customer's own enthusiasm made the work worth it. Watching a new customer get genuinely excited about the platform is energizing and special, and it did a lot to help motivate me to get this deal finalized.
What surprises people the most about being an AE at Braze?
The stereotype can be that AEs spend all their time going on business trips and discussing contracts, but that’s not the case. On a single day, I might have 10 meetings with 10 different customers or prospects, each at a different stage of evaluation and each with their own problems to solve.
Doing that well means wearing several hats at once: Being a BDR who can source or coach pipeline, a solutions consultant who knows the product well enough to bring in the right expert at the right moment, a part of the Legal team when a contract needs defending, a value consultant who can build the business case, an onboarding manager who can walk a nervous customer through implementation, and a partnerships manager who understands how joint deals get won. There’s so much behind a role known as just two short letters.
The easiest part of my job is the product, which I don’t think is something a lot of AEs out there can say. Having an exceptional product to sell, one that really works, is such a gift. Plus, our pace of development, especially on AI, gives me a lot to work with. The way that we're doing our research and development, the pace at which we’re launching new features is unmatched. The hard part of the role is the sheer weight of responsibility that comes with meeting (and exceeding) ambitious growth goals. It's demanding, but it keeps my job from ever feeling like one narrow lane and makes it exciting to come in and get to work every day.
What qualities make a great AE at Braze?
I boil it down to three: Grit, focus, and empathy.
Grit gets you through challenges, and that’s important given the rapid pace of change in the space. It means not taking no for an answer and staying ambitious even in situations where something feels like it may not work out.
Focus is what keeps that pace from swallowing you. With this much going on, setting my own priorities and defending them against the noise is a skill set I've had to build deliberately.
Empathy comes last but matters most: Empathy for myself, so I can take a step back and rest without guilt, and empathy for my customers, who are figuring out a fast-changing market right alongside me. That combination, more than anything else, has let me succeed at Braze for the past four and a half years.
What's the culture like on the Revenue team and in the Berlin office?
Ambitious and full of integrity, and that’s not just in Berlin. Our Revenue organization has really high standards and ambitious goals, and I feel that determination in how the team carries itself day to day. It shows up in how we sell, too: In a market with plenty of noise and big claims, we hold ourselves to a higher standard, committing ourselves to accuracy and making a point of acting as a trusted adviser first. We pride ourselves on achieving extremely high standards in the way we do sales, even when that takes more patience and effort.
The Berlin office itself has grown from a small team into a large one since I joined, and the loyalty from those early days never really left. We have each other’s backs, show up for each other's milestones, and we connect on a personal level. I'm getting married next year, and looking at the guest list, the Braze Berlin office will be quite empty on that day.
How do people grow into a sales career at Braze?
I can share my personal story. When I was deciding whether to move into Sales from Partnerships, I made a pros-and-cons list, and the biggest con was fear of failure. A colleague reframed it for me: What actually happens if you fail? You keep going, with the same team and the same support behind you. That reframe stuck. I now have a genuinely healthier relationship with failure: Every no is one step closer to a yes.
My own growth since then has come from a mix of sources: An accelerated learning curve built on real effort and my own energy, in-person company training that I think is unusually generous by industry standards, and mentorship, both official and informal. Braze runs a formal mentorship program that I've been part of, and the informal version comes from colleagues who step in and help me out when I ask, which has always been part of the culture in Berlin.
My move from Partnerships into Sales was influenced by a mentor who noticed before I did that I’d already developed the required skills. Running a regional partner strategy meant I was already doing the broad-and-deep work sales requires: Setting a broad strategy across a market, then going deep on individual deals, pitching the product and owning outcomes. Some people called the switch unconventional. But for me, it was a natural fit for my own strengths rather than a textbook career path. My move from Mid-Market to Emerging Enterprise came next, allowing me to draw on my experience selling to smaller brands as I worked on managing larger and more complex deal cycles.
My advice for anyone wanting to grow in sales at Braze: Get specific about what you actually want, because the route there is rarely a straight line. Also, don't chase the role just for the shine of it. The reputation is real, but it's built on the work happening behind the scenes.
How has your work with Braze ERGs impacted your experience?
Before I ever worked at Braze, I found the company's employee resource groups listed on the careers website and assumed it was standard marketing every SaaS company runs. Joining the small, early Berlin team for Elle@Braze immediately challenged my assumption: The programs turned out to be funded with a real budget, and built around empowerment and allyship rather than just messaging.
That mattered to me personally. I grew up navigating situations that (as a woman and someone who is half Indian) made me doubt how much room there was for people like me to grow professional. Leading these groups in Berlin has been a way to help change that for others. Day to day, my work includes bringing in customers, prospects, and leaders to talk about progression in tech and customer relationship management as a woman, alongside community events.
For example, during our last Sales Kickoff (SKO) in Denver, our ERG ran a book club, which was even joined by our Chief Revenue Officer and Vice President of Sales. That’s a moment that really stood out to me. That kind of visible buy-in is why this involvement has built real loyalty. It's also given me a way to connect with people across the company I'd never otherwise cross paths with, outside the usual lines of my day job.
Final thoughts
Four years in, Marissa's read on the AE role hasn't changed much: No two days look the same, the job pulls in nearly every team at Braze, and the real wins come down to grit, focus, and empathy in equal measure.
The Braze Berlin team has grown a lot since she joined, but the people who show up for each other (in the office, on deals, and through our ERGs) are still what keeps her here. If that sounds like the kind of Sales career you want, find out more about the Berlin team here and explore open roles on our careers page.
