Manager, Commercial Sales Development

The role, in a nutshell:

As the Manager of Sales Development, you will lead and mentor a team of BDRs responsible for both inbound lead qualification as well as outbound opportunity generation. Your role involves hiring and onboarding new BDRs, developing and implementing strategies to optimize the BDR team's performance, setting and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), and ensuring alignment with the company’s overall sales goals. You will provide hands-on coaching and development, drive repeatable progress toward pipeline targets, and foster a collaborative environment to enhance productivity and motivation. In addition, you will work closely with the Director of Sales Development and Sales leaders to refine lead generation tactics, manage pipeline generation, and improve top of funnel conversion rates. Your leadership will be crucial in achieving pipeline targets and driving the overall success of the Sales Development function at Chainguard.

What you’ll do:

• Continue to build out our growing BDR function, working with recruiting to identify top talent to hire and onboard
• Develop your team’s skills for outbound prospecting, qualifying, and opportunity creation
• Provide ongoing feedback and coaching in recurring weekly 1:1s to ensure BDR team members develop skills and performance over time
• Work closely with the Demand Generation team to provide feedback on MQLs and campaigns
• Work closely with the Sales team to improve outbounding strategies and qualification processes while also tackling other areas of improvement
• Work in collaboration with Marketing/Sales/Product to develop effective messaging to outbound into target accounts and convert inbound interest into qualified pipeline
• Work closely with Sales leadership to ensure alignment on your team's strategy and execution on account coverage, target personas, opportunity quality and BDR to AE hand-off
• Accurately forecast weekly, monthly, and quarterly attainment
• Closely monitor team performance metrics and KPIs with the goal to increase BDR productivity

What we're looking for:

• 2+ years leading a team of BDRs (Cybersecurity, DevSecOps, Infrastructure, OSS strongly preferred)
• Experience with funnel management across multiple channels and focuses (inbound, outbound, upsell, new business)
• Hands on enablement experience in onboarding, ramping, and developing your team
• Experience with sales and marketing tools, including CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot), lead generation software, and productivity tools
• Strong analytical skills and ability to make data driven decisions
• Proven ability to effectively recruit, hire, and train new people
• Proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced, unpredictable environment
• Aptitude for identifying challenges and developing creative solutions to enhance team efficiency and effectiveness
• Experience prospecting or selling into Enterprise accounts
• Understanding of B2B software, Open Source software, and the developer product space is preferred
• Experience growing within a small start-up is preferred