# Director of Sales Development

**Company:** [Lightning AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/lightning-ai)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Sales Development
**Salary:** $160k – $215k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** Outbound Sales, sales development, Pipeline Generation, sdr metrics, MEDDIC, account-based outbound, Sales Playbooks, sales coaching, Revenue Operations
**Posted:** 2026-07-29

> Lead, coach, and scale an SDR team to generate high-quality enterprise pipeline for AI and technical products through disciplined outbound motions, playbooks, and detailed coaching of early-career sellers. Requires 4+ years B2B sales experience including 1+ year managing SDRs.

## Job Description

## 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.

## Compensation
The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is $160,000–$215,000 USD. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.

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