Architectural Sales Manager, Northern California

About Us

Cambium is a modern American wood manufacturer, distributor, and technology company connecting and modernizing the wood economy. We work with architects, builders, and leading brands across the built environment, including Amazon, Room & Board, and Equinox. Our work has been recognized by Time's Best Inventions and Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards. Technology is how we match supply to demand across a fragmented industry. The American hardwood industry has lost more than half its sawmills in the last two decades. Quality trees go to waste, and the US imports more lumber than it produces, even though domestic capacity could meet nearly all of our needs. Until now, this industry forced a choice: local relationships or national scale, meaningful materials or modern efficiency. We don't think those are real tradeoffs. We're building the infrastructure to prove it, with modern software, better supply chains, and a clear view of what comes next: a wood economy that's local, efficient, and built to last.

About This Role

Northern California is open territory for us. We have the largest dealer bench in the company here, inbound demand that grew every month this summer, and no one in the field. You will be the first architectural seller Cambium puts in the State. You will decide which firms we work, which projects we chase, and how we show up in the A & D community. What you build here becomes the model we repeat in New York, Chicago, and every region after.

The job is to get Cambium specified. Inside the building, that means salvaged hardwood paneling, slat ceilings, millwork, and flooring with a documented source and a carbon story that California architects ask for and can defend to their clients. Outside the building, that means Arbor Wood, our thermally modified, fire compliant wood for siding, soffits, decking, and siding, a stable, domestically sourced alternative to tropical hardwood and cedar. You carry both. Most of the reps you will see in a materials library carry one.

Our work shows up in hospitality, multifamily, higher education, healthcare, corporate interiors, and high end residential. If you have spent your career getting ceilings, surfaces, tile, or envelope products written into those kinds of projects, you already know the firms, the phases, and the people we need to reach. Wood knowledge is helpful and not required. We will teach you the product. We cannot teach you fifteen years of relationships.

A plain description of what you get on day one: a full sample library, a product deck, an accredited CEU course, a HubSpot instance with a central inbound team that qualifies leads before they reach you, a dealer network across California that stocks and ships our products, and a VP of Sales who lives in San Francisco and sells alongside you. If you build your career inside a large manufacturer and want to find out what you can build when the decisions are yours, this is that seat.

What You'll Do Here

• Build and own a portfolio of 15 to 20 Bay Area architecture and design firms across the segments where we win. Map the people inside each firm who choose materials, and keep a regular cadence with every one of them.

• Get Cambium into the basis of design early, in schematic design and design development, for both interior and exterior scopes. Register every spec in HubSpot with the project, the firm, the product, and the expected PO date.

• Hold specs through value engineering. When a general contractor, millwork sub, or siding installer proposes a substitute, you are the person who keeps our product on the drawing.

• Deliver CEU presentations and lunch and learns inside your portfolio, and keep our samples current in the libraries that matter. You schedule them, you present them, you bring the boxes.

• Work with our California dealers so specified product flows through the right channel. You create the demand with the specifier. The dealer stocks and delivers. You stay on the project until the PO is placed.

• Carry a pipeline coverage number: quota divided by win rate equals the specs you need registered. Report against it weekly, and tell us what the market is telling you.

• Work the direct accounts and residential referrals that come to you through inbound and your own network. Quotes under a set threshold go to inside sales. Everything above it, you own.

• Write the first version of Cambium's architectural sales playbook with the VP of Sales: which firms, which products, which phase, what works. This is how we will sell in every region after California.

Your Skill Sets and Capabilities Include

• Five or more years selling a specified building product to architects and designers in Northern California. Most of the people we are talking to have ten or more. Ceilings, acoustic and wall systems, surfaces, tile and stone, flooring, cladding, envelope, glass, or architectural millwork all count. Showroom and design consulting years count when they put you in front of specifiers.

• Working relationships with Bay Area architecture and design firms today. You can name the firms and the people in the interview, and we will check.

• Specifications you have personally held through value engineering, with the project names and what you did to keep them.

• Knowledge of how a materials library works, how a spec section is written, and how a submittal gets approved.

• Comfort selling through dealers and distributors as well as direct. You know how to create demand with the specifier and let the channel fulfill it.

• Patience for a long cycle and discipline to track it. Commercial projects run twelve to twenty four months from first conversation to PO. You build pipeline that pays next year while you close what is in front of you this year.

• A record you can show. Named projects, named firms, and a reason each one chose you.

• HubSpot or an equivalent CRM as a daily habit.

  
  

The Details

• This role will report to: Sydney Tanaka, VP of Sales

• Equity: Stock options.

• When: Target start January 5, 2027. We can start as early as December 1, 2026 for the right candidate.

• Where: You live in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a field role: three to four days a week in architecture firms, materials libraries, dealer locations, and job sites, with regular in person working sessions with the executive team in San Francisco. Home based the rest of the time. Candidates outside the Bay Area will not be considered for this seat.

• Territory and travel: The Bay Area and Northern California. Overnight travel is occasional for our facilities and team training, not a standing part of the job.

Benefits and Perks

• Equity options package

• Unlimited PTO and flexible schedule

• 401k matching

• Comprehensive medical, dental & vision insurance

• Work with an incredibly smart, diverse, climate mission driven team

• An opportunity to play a core role in defining our fast growing company

• Volunteer tree planting days

  
  

Cambium is committed to building an inclusive organization that reflects the diverse communities our team works to serve. We believe that diversity in all its forms (gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion, veteran's status, disability and more) is essential to imagining and actively building a more just and sustainable future for all. We hope you feel welcome here. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.