Director of Sales Development

About this role

Who We Are

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction.

Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in.

We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

The Way We Work

The people who thrive here are builders who move fast, communicate openly, take ownership, and continuously improve themselves, their teams, and our company. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Move with Urgency: We move quickly, make thoughtful decisions, and keep momentum. We value action over perfection and learn by shipping.

• Take Ownership: We own outcomes, not just our individual work. We make decisions that move the company forward and follow through.

• Communicate Openly: We communicate directly, seek to understand, and create clarity for others. Honest conversations help us move faster together.

• Build Great Teams: We lead by example, empower others, and create healthy teams where people can do their best work.

• Raise the Bar: We're always improving ourselves. We learn from feedback, consistently challenge ourselves to grow, and focus on the work that matters most.

• Think Long-Term: We design for what's next. We create scalable systems, simplify complexity, and use AI and automation to amplify our impact.

About Lightning AI

Lightning AI is building the platform and infrastructure that make it dramatically easier for teams to develop, train, deploy, and scale AI systems. As the company behind PyTorch Lightning, and following our merger with Voltage Park, we bring together developer-first AI tooling with high-performance compute infrastructure for researchers, startups, and enterprises building at the frontier of AI.

We operate with a simple set of values: Move Fast, Focus, Balance, Craftsmanship, and Minimal. We care about people who can operate with urgency, solve hard problems directly, and build with high standards without creating unnecessary complexity.

About the Role

We 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 packa

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