AI Sales Development Intern

Ascendo; United States; Hybrid; USD 20,000 - 29,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stipend

Mentorship

Hybrid work

Job summary

Ascendo AI is seeking a Sales Development Intern to own the front of the pipeline for a vertical slice including medical devices, energy, telecom, and industrial equipment. You will map accounts, determine owners of first-time fix rate, and craft targeted outbound messages referencing real-world contexts.

You will book qualified discovery meetings and collaborate with an Account Executive, while learning from coaching and real customer conversations.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, or graduated within the last 12 months.
• Available for at least a 16 week commitment of at least 40 hours per week.
• Strong written communication in English, with the judgment to write a short, specific email rather than a long, generic one.
• Coursework, internship, or project experience in sales, business development, engineering, or an industrial or clinical setting.
• Curiosity about how physical things break and get fixed—mechanical, electrical, biomedical, or industrial domains.
• Experience with research and outbound tooling such as LinkedIn, CRM systems, or sequencing tools, or clear evidence you pick up new tools quickly.
• Experience organizing structured information at volume, such as building datasets, research databases, or competitive landscapes.
• Comfort being coached in public—sharing call recordings, taking direct feedback, and trying the next version the same day.

Responsibilities

• Research and map target accounts, including install base, service model, systems of record, and the executives accountable for service performance.
• Write and run outbound sequences across email, phone, and LinkedIn, coordinating with your pod so no account hears from us twice.
• Qualify inbound and outbound interest against our ideal customer profile and hand off cleanly to your Account Executive.
• Book and attend discovery meetings, take structured notes, and log everything accurately in CRM.
• Work with the pre-sales intern to pair outreach with a specific, relevant proof asset.
• Bring back what you hear—objections, competitors, language customers actually use—to sales, marketing, and product.
• Present a market thesis capstone to the founding team at the end of the internship.

Skills

Strong written English

Research and outbound tooling

Structured data organization

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree candidate or recent graduate

Tools

LinkedIn

CRM systems

Sequencing tools

Job description

The technician who knows to flush the system before replacing the part is retiring in eighteen months. Every service leader we talk to knows this and very few have a plan. Your job on this team is to find those leaders and start the conversation.

As a Sales Development Intern, you own the front of the pipeline for one slice of a vertical—medical devices, energy and utilities, telecom, or industrial equipment. You will build the account and install-base map, work out who actually owns first-time fix rate and escalation cost inside each organization, and write outbound that references their specific reality rather than a generic AI pitch. You will book qualified discovery meetings for the Account Executive you work alongside, sit in on those meetings, and hear directly where your message landed and where it missed.

Strong performers are our first call for the full-time Sales Development Representative role.

Minimum qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, or graduated within the last 12 months.
• Available for at least a 16 week commitment of at least 40 hours per week.
• Strong written communication in English, with the judgment to write a short, specific email rather than a long, generic one.

Preferred qualifications

• Coursework, internship, or project experience in sales, business development, engineering, or an industrial or clinical setting.
• Curiosity about how physical things break and get fixed—coursework, hobbies, or work experience in mechanical, electrical, biomedical, or industrial domains.
• Experience with research and outbound tooling such as LinkedIn, CRM systems, or sequencing tools, or clear evidence you pick up new tools quickly.
• Experience organizing structured information at volume, such as building datasets, research databases, or competitive landscapes.
• Comfort being coached in public—sharing call recordings, taking direct feedback, and trying the next version the same day.

Responsibilities

• Research and map target accounts, including install base, service model, systems of record, and the executives accountable for service performance.
• Write and run outbound sequences across email, phone, and LinkedIn, coordinating with your pod so no account hears from us twice.
• Qualify inbound and outbound interest against our ideal customer profile and hand off cleanly to your Account Executive.
• Book and attend discovery meetings, take structured notes, and log everything accurately in CRM.
• Work with the pre-sales intern to pair outreach with a specific, relevant proof asset.
• Bring back what you hear—objections, competitors, language customers actually use—to sales, marketing, and product.
• Present a market thesis capstone to the founding team at the end of the internship.

Compensation and logistics

This is a paid internship with a fixed stipend.

About Ascendo AI

Ascendo AI builds Physical AI agents for critical infrastructure and field service. Rather than summarizing manuals, our inference engine captures the operational judgment of a customer’s best technicians and scales it to every technician, in every language, on every shift—with the human in command. The platform runs in production across energy, telecom, medical devices, and defense, supports more than 10,000 products in 161 languages, and is SOC 2 Type 2 certified. Teams operate out of Palo Alto and Chennai.