About the RoleWe are looking for a Sales Development Representative Manager to build, lead, and scale our SDR team. This is a player-coach leadership role for someone who knows how to create high-quality enterprise pipeline, coach early-career sellers, and build a disciplined outbound motion for technical markets. You should be comfortable operating close to the work: inspecting messaging, listening to calls, coaching activity quality, and helping SDRs become excellent sellers.
What You'll Do- Lead, coach, and develop a team of SDRs responsible for creating qualified enterprise pipeline.
- Build a high-accountability outbound operating cadence around territory planning, account research, personalization, sequencing, call quality, email quality, and conversion metrics.
- Partner with Account Executives and Sales leadership to define target accounts, ICP signals, outbound plays, and qualification criteria.
- Coach SDRs on how to engage technical buyers, including ML leaders, engineering leaders, infrastructure teams, data leaders, and executives.
- Create and maintain playbooks for messaging, objection handling, discovery, account prioritization, qualification, and handoffs.
- Inspect activity, conversion rates, meetings booked, meeting quality, pipeline created, and progression to opportunity.
- Hire and onboard SDRs who are curious, competitive, coachable, and capable of earning bigger roles over time.
- Work with Marketing and Revenue Operations to improve campaign execution, tooling, reporting, data quality, and lead routing.
- Set a culture of preparation, urgency, resilience, and craftsmanship.
What We're Looking For- 4+ years in B2B sales development, outbound sales, or account executive roles, including 1+ year managing or formally coaching SDRs.
- Experience building outbound pipeline for enterprise or technical products.
- Strong understanding of SDR metrics, including activity quality, connect rates, reply rates, meeting conversion, accepted opportunity rate, and pipeline created.
- Ability to coach messaging, discovery, objection handling, prioritization, and professional habits at a detailed level.
- Clear communication, high energy, and comfort holding people accountable in a direct but constructive way.
- Experience partnering with Account Executives, Marketing, and Revenue Operations.
- A strong belief that great SDR teams are built through discipline, coaching, and quality of work, not activity theater.
Nice-to-Haves- Experience selling AI, cloud infrastructure, developer tools, data platforms, MLOps, or technical SaaS.
- Experience building an SDR function from an early stage.
- Familiarity with MEDDIC-style qualification and enterprise account-based outbound.
- Experience hiring and developing SDRs into AEs or other revenue roles.
Why Lightning AI- You will help define how companies build and scale real AI systems, not just sell another generic software product.
- You will work with technical customers and teammates who care about speed, clarity, craft, and direct problem-solving.
- You will join a company with developer credibility, infrastructure ambition, and a GTM motion that is still early enough to shape.
We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.
The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is:
$160,000-$215,000 USD
Benefits and PerksWe offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support our employees' health, well-being, and long-term success:
- Comprehensive Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
- Meaningful Equity: RSUs that give employees a stake in the company's long-term success.
- Retirement Savings: 401(k) matching (U.S.) and pension contributions (U.K.).
- Flexible Time Off: Unlimited PTO, company holidays, and floating holidays to support work-life balance.
- Company-Wide Winter Break: Two weeks of company closure each winter to disconnect and recharge.
- Paid Parental & Family Leave: Paid leave to support you and your family through life's important moments.
- Professional Development: Annual learning and development allowance to support your professional growth.
- Wellness Benefits: Wellness and work-from-home stipends to support your physical and mental well-being.
- Sabbatical Program: Four weeks of paid sabbatical leave after four years of service.
- Flexible Work: Flexible schedules and a hybrid work model for our office-based teams.
- In-Office Meals: Complimentary meals at our office hubs.
Benefits may vary by location, team, and role.
