Founding Enterprise SDR

Zania; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Flexible PTO

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Job summary

Zania is seeking a Founding Enterprise SDR to lead our outbound motion aimed at Fortune 500 CISOs, Chief Risk Officers, and Compliance Leads. You’ll craft hyper-personalized messaging, leverage AI tooling, and build an outbound engine from the ground up with the founders.

You will research accounts, create scalable sequences, and develop the ICP with the founding team while tackling highly strategic, complex sales in a growth-stage setting.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 1–3 years outbound SDR or highly strategic prospecting role in early-stage B2B SaaS or cybersecurity.
• Demonstrated experience using modern AI tools to enhance productivity in a sales context.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication—credible with technical security leaders.
• Track record of meeting or exceeding outbound meeting targets.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the outbound engine with founders and Account Executives.
• AI-powered prospecting and multi-channel outreach to Tier-1 accounts.
• Map enterprise org charts, identify champions and decision-makers, multi-threaded campaigns.
• Collaborate with founders to refine ICP and core pitch; iterate on playbooks.

Skills

Written communication

Self-starter

Resilience

Creativity

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

ChatGPT

Claude

Clay

Perplexity

Job description

Founding Enterprise SDR

Why Zania

Every enterprise spends millions of dollars on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). It's one of the most critical, yet universally painful, parts of running a business. For decades, this industry has been dominated by legacy systems with notoriously low NPS scores, making it totally ripe for disruption.

Zania is building agentic AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) to solve this massive problem. We are on a rocketship trajectory, creating intelligent agents that automate and augment the most complex risk and compliance workflows. We have found exceptional product-market fit and are scaling our team very quickly. Some reasons to join Zania are:

• Dream Customers: Our customers are the most notable enterprises in the world, including FAANG, Big 4 firms, and a portfolio of top customers.
• Tier 1 Backing: Funded by a leading Tier 1 venture capital fund, giving us the resources to build a generational company.
• World-Class Team: Zania is hiring the best. Our team includes AI and Security leaders from Airbnb, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte, PwC, Brex, and Instacart.
• Pioneering Technology: Our engineers and GRC experts work at the absolute forefront of applied AI.
• Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding.
• Competitive Compensation & Equity.

Role Overview

This is not a seat for someone who wants a playbook handed to them. You will be Zania’s Founding Enterprise SDR.

We are targeting the most heavily guarded executives in the world—Fortune 500 CISOs, Chief Risk Officers, and Compliance Leads. Standard "smile and dial" tactics and copy-pasted email sequences will not work here. We need a ruthless, creative, and highly resourceful hunter who can figure out how to break into accounts that seem impenetrable.

Because you are selling cutting-edge AI, we expect you to use cutting-edge AI. You will be an "AI-native" SDR, leveraging the latest tools (custom GPTs, Clay, Perplexity, agentic workflows) to research accounts, craft hyper-personalized messaging at scale, and 10x your output. You will build our outbound engine from scratch alongside the founders.

What You’ll Do

• Build the Outbound Engine: As the first SDR, you won't just run plays; you will write the playbook. You will figure out what messaging, channels, and cadences actually convert CISOs.
• AI-Powered Prospecting: You will build and leverage AI workflows to scrape intent data, analyze company 10-Ks, and generate hyper-personalized outreach. You use AI to do the work of 10 SDRs.
• Guerrilla Tactics & Resourcefulness: If email fails, you find their phone number. If the phone fails, you send a personalized video. If that fails, you figure out what obscure Slack community they are in. You do whatever it legally and ethically takes to get the meeting.
• Break into Tier-1 Accounts: Map out complex enterprise org charts, identify champions and decision-makers, and execute multi-threaded outbound campaigns into the Fortune 500.
• Partner with Founders: Work intimately with the founding team and Account Executives to iterate on our ideal customer profile (ICP) and refine our core pitch.

What We Care About

• The Builder's Mentality: You thrive in ambiguity. You don't need a manager telling you what to do every hour; you are a self-starter who runs experiments and shares results.
• AI-First Mindset: You are deeply curious about AI and naturally look for ways to automate the mundane parts of sales so you can focus on high-value human connection.
• Fearlessness & Resilience: Rejection is just data. You are entirely unfazed by cold-calling a multi-billion dollar company’s executive team.
• Creative Hustle: You view a closed door as a puzzle. You are scrappy, out-of-the-box, and relentless in your pursuit of pipeline.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 1–3 years of experience in an outbound SDR, sales, or highly strategic prospecting role, ideally at an early-stage B2B SaaS or cybersecurity startup.
• Demonstrated experience using modern AI tools to enhance productivity (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Clay, Perplexity) in a sales context.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills—you must be able to sound credible to technical security leaders.
• Track record of consistently meeting or exceeding outbound meeting targets.

Location

Based in (or willing to relocate to) Palo Alto, working in-person with the team five days a week.

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary + uncapped commission.
• Equity (you are a founding team member).
• Flexible PTO policy.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.