BDR - Business Development Representative

Sedna; Greater London; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 52,000; Full time

Job summary

Sedna is seeking a motivated Business Development Representative in London to drive outreach to shipping companies and qualify opportunities. You’ll be on the front line, learning Sedna’s AI-powered platform and industry language while building essential sales skills.

No formal sales background is required; curiosity and drive are valued as you engage with prospects, network via LinkedIn, and help expand Sedna’s customer base in the shipping sector.

Qualifications

• Self-motivated and driven to succeed in a fast-growth tech environment.
• Clear, concise communicator who holds the audience's attention.
• Emotionally intelligent with the ability to manage stress and collaborate.
• Tech-savvy and quick to learn new tools and platforms.
• Willing to learn and adapt; an entry point into a sales/tech career.
• Shipping industry knowledge is a plus, not required.

Responsibilities

• Identify and engage potential shipping industry clients using social tools and research.
• Outreach via email, calls, videos, and social channels to qualify leads.
• Qualify leads and book initial meetings with account teams.
• Collaborate with Account Executives to forecast and develop pipeline.
• Continuous learning and sharing insights to improve team results.

Skills

Self-motivation

Concise communication

Emotional intelligence

Technical aptitude

Coachable

Shipping knowledge

Job description

BDR - Business Development Representative

London

About Sedna

Sedna is at the forefront of revolutionising global trade, serving as the North Star for businesses navigating the complexities of international commerce. Our AI-powered platform is designed to make global trade more efficient, transparent, and sustainable. As we continue to grow and innovate, we are looking for exceptional talent to join our journey and contribute to our mission of transforming global trade.

Sedna is on a mission to transform how the shipping industry communicates and operates - we’re already the platform behind 10 million emails a day for 950+ shipping and trading companies worldwide, and we’re just getting started. If you’ve spent time in the shipping industry and are looking for your next move into a fast-growing tech business, this is exactly the kind of role that makes that jump possible.

As a Business Development Representative, you’ll be on the front line of our growth: the first point of contact between Sedna and the shipping companies we want to work with. It’s a fantastic entry point into a career in sales and tech - no formal sales background required, just curiosity, drive and, ideally, a bit of first-hand shipping knowledge so you already speak our customers’ language.

Working in a fast-growth company means that no day is ever the same! But here are the main responsibilities and tasks you’ll undertake while working for us:

Industry and product knowledge

• Keeping abreast of maritime industry trends to increase your credibility in the industry - e.g. subscribing to blogs/podcasts, reading books, researching case studies.
• Increasing your knowledge of similar, complementary and competing products.
• Learning about the experiences other clients have with Sedna, so that you can apply these successes and learnings to your conversations.
• Using the product extensively - both to make your work successful, but also to learn of its features, value and use cases.
• Prioritising your list of accounts based on certain qualifying criteria.
• Researching your accounts, ensuring you have a clear understanding of previous discussions.
• Identifying and gathering information on new and existing contacts within your accounts.
• Leveraging various sales tools to assist with data capturing and research.
• Organising your time and collaborating with Account Executives and your Team Lead to ensure your time is being utilised in the most effective way.

Contacting, nurturing and qualifying leads

• Leveraging sales and social tools e.g. LinkedIn to network and engage with your leads.
• Sending emails and making outbound calls, videos and voice messages to contacts within your accounts.
• Experimenting with different social engagement tactics.
• Qualifying leads to assess their suitability and readiness for Sedna.
• Building relationships with prospects who are not yet ready to explore Sedna.
• Booking initial meetings, in line with targets.
• Attending initial meetings to learn more about the sales process and Sedna’s value.
• Contributing to reporting requirements needed for effective forecasting.
• Reflecting on successes and failures, and making improvements to your ways of working as a result.
• Collaborating with other BDRs and relevant people in the industry to share learnings and to ensure that the collective team is achieving targets and developing.

About You

At Sedna, we believe it’s your skills and attributes that ultimately make you successful in a role. Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Self motivated - you are motivated to achieve in this role because of your enthusiasm - you relish pressure from others but don’t need it to succeed.
• Concise communicator - you can articulate a message in a calm, clear, focused way. You hold your audience’s attention, and they retain what you tell them. Equally, you actively listen and interpret what your audience tells you.
• Emotionally intelligent - you understand, use and control your emotions in positive ways, to relieve stress, empathise with others, overcome challenges, and diffuse conflict.
• Technical aptitude - you keep abreast with modern technologies and have the ability to learn and master them quickly.
• Coachable - this is a genuine entry point into your career, so how fast you learn and adapt matters more than what you’ve done before.
• Shipping background a plus - a couple of years’ experience somewhere in the shipping industry (operations, chartering, broking, agency, or similar) is ideal, but not essential. No previous sales experience is required - we’ll teach you everything you need to know about selling; what we can’t teach is genuine curiosity about the industry and the drive to build a career in tech.

Our Values

Finally, culture is important to us, so we also look for candidates who share our values:

Stay Ahead, Stay Agile

• We don’t just adapt-we anticipate change and act with confidence.
• Curiosity, data, and customer insights help us stay ahead of the curve.
• We embrace challenges as opportunities and remain resilient under pressure.
• By staying open to new ideas and ways of working, we lead the future.

Execute With Focus

• We turn strategy into action, delivering measurable results that matter.
• Every initiative counts-discipline and ownership drive business impact.
• We make smart decisions with speed, balancing pace and precision.
• Clear priorities keep us focused on what moves the needle.

Work Together, Win Together

• Collaboration is our superpower-we succeed as one team, internally and with customers.
• We co-create solutions, seek feedback, and build the future of the OS together.
• Strong relationships are built on trust, respect, and shared goals.
• By aligning across teams and with customers, we unlock greater impact.