BDR Manager

Kernel

London (KY)

On-site

USD 107,000 - 161,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Equity

London office

24 days holiday

Dinner allowance

Work-from-anywhere (2 weeks)

Pension plan

Top-spec equipment

Team events

Direct work with founders

Job summary

Kernel is building a reliable business identity layer for agents and is hiring a BDR Manager to accelerate outbound growth in 2026. You will own a team of ~12 BDRs, partner with AEs, marketing, and leadership to ensure high-quality pipeline and consistent top-of-funnel output.

The role reports to the Head of Sales and requires a strong track record in scaling BDR teams, plus the ability to build playbooks, processes and territory plans in a fast-paced startup.

Qualifications

4+ years in business development and/or outbound sales.
Experience leading a BDR or SDR team.
Experience scaling a BDR team (10+ reps) or similar.
Ability to build process, playbooks, and territory strategy.
Bonus: RevOps, data and GTM tools knowledge.

Responsibilities

Set ICP, targeting, and outbound messaging with leadership.
Translate targets into measurable BDR goals and distribute pipeline load.
Iterate outbound plays, channels, and sequences to improve conversions.
Develop the BDR team as a talent pool for the organization.

Skills

BDR management

Scaling a BDR team

Outbound and messaging strategy

Job description

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $14M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 5x YoY.

The Role

We have strong product market fit. In 2025 we grew ~5x with world class net dollar retention, mostly from founder-led sales, and now have AEs hitting quota with an emerging playbook.
We're looking for a BDR Manager to accelerate our outbound engine as we scale in 2026. You'll own a team of ~12 BDRs and be responsible for the pipeline that fuels our growth.
You will report to Dave Bentham (Head of Sales) and work closely with our AEs, marketing, and leadership team to make sure the top of funnel is consistently feeding high-quality pipeline.

What You’ll Be Doing

Set the strategy

Work with Dave and the rest of leadership to define ICP, targeting, and outbound messaging.
Translate company targets into clear, measurable BDR goals and ensure pipeline expectations are distributed strategically across the team.
Continuously iterate on outbound plays, channels, and sequences to improve conversion at every stage.
Develop the BDR team to be a talent pool for the rest of the organisation through a culture of constant learning

Set the team

Manage and develop a team of ~12 BDRs across inbound and outbound.
Work alongside our recruiters to grow the team as we scale.
Be accountable for team performance. Coach underperformers, promote top performers, and set a high bar across the board.
Our BDR team is the talent engine for the entire GTM team. Nurturing the best people and helping them be ready for the next role is crucial.

Set the operating cadence

Define qualification criteria and handoff processes that set AEs up to close.
Build repeatable outbound plays that convert, and partner with marketing where needed.
Establish pipeline generation rigor: activity metrics, and predictable output.
Run weekly team reviews, call coaching sessions, and continuous improvement loops.

What You Bring:

4+ years in business development and/or outbound sales, with at least some time managing a BDR or SDR team.
Experience scaling a BDR team (e.g. growing from a handful of reps to 10+) or managing a team of that size.
Strong instincts for messaging, targeting, and what makes outbound actually work.
Comfort operating in ambiguity: you can build process, playbooks, and territory strategy.
Bonus: the deeper your knowledge of RevOps, data, and GTM tools the better.

This role may not be for you if you:

Need lots of structure or polished specs.
You like spending weeks agonizing on a single initiative, or don’t want to rapidly iterate and run experiments.
Require detailed instructions.

This role is definitely not for you if you:

Prefer remote or hybrid work (requires 4+ days in London office) and/or can’t travel to clients (US+Europe)
Don’t enjoy the pace of an early-stage startup.
Want to carry your own deals instead of building and coaching a team.

What We Offer

We will do our best to offer you the ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.