Sales Development Manager

Fireworks AI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 175,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Fireworks AI is seeking its first SDR Manager to build and lead the business development function from the ground up. You will coach SDRs, craft playbooks, and design AI-powered workflows behind our top-of-funnel motion.

This hands-on leadership role focuses on performance, process design, and data-driven decision making. You’ll partner with Marketing and RevOps to convert signals into qualified opportunities at our New York or San Francisco locations.

Qualifications

• 2–4 years of direct, first-line management experience leading SDR/BDR teams.
• Proven coaching and development record with reps promoted to AE or leadership roles.
• Strong AI tooling and process skills with hands-on AI workflows for sales productivity.
• Data-driven mindset: analyze numbers, identify bottlenecks, and implement fixes.
• Experience managing performance via metrics, funnel analytics, and pipeline forecasting.
• Prior experience as an individual contributor in sales development or closing roles.
• Excellent communication and organizational skills with technical buyers.

Responsibilities

• Hire, onboard, and lead a team of SDRs, scaling as Fireworks grows.
• Coach reps through 1:1s, reviews, and skill development, path from BDR to AE.
• Own team performance across activity, conversion rates, meetings booked, pipeline.
• Build playbooks for inbound/outbound qualification, ICP, personas, messaging, handoffs.
• Partner with Marketing to convert inbound signals into opportunities.
• Design AI workflows for research, prioritization, personalization, and reporting.
• Audit SDR processes to maintain efficiency at scale.
• Build dashboards and real-time funnel visibility for team and leadership.
• Use data to identify bottlenecks and drive improvements quickly.
• Collaborate with Sales leadership and RevOps on accounts and territories.

Skills

First-line management

Coaching & development

AI tooling

Data-driven decision making

Sales analytics

Sales process design

Tools

Gong

Salesforce

Outreach

Apollo

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Job description

SDR Manager

Department: Sales

Location: New York, San Francisco

Compensation: $175K – $210K Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Us:

Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI.

THE ROLE

We’re hiring our first SDR Manager to help build Fireworks’ business development function from the ground up. You’ll lead, coach, and grow a team of SDRs who qualify inbound interest from developers and enterprises and prospect into high-value target accounts. Together, you’ll create the pipeline that drives our Account Executive team.

This is a builder role. You’ll own the team’s performance and development while designing the playbooks, systems, and AI-powered workflows behind our top-of-funnel motion. We’re looking for a hands-on, first-line leader who gets results through great coaching. They should be fluent in AI tooling and process design, let data guide their decisions, and bring a “can do” attitude to every problem. They should be excited to define how sales development works at one of the fastest-growing companies in AI.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Hire, onboard, and lead a team of SDRs, scaling the team as Fireworks grows

• Coach reps through regular 1:1s, call and email reviews, and hands-on skill development, building a clear path from BDR to AE

• Own team performance across activity, conversion rates, meetings booked, pipeline generated, and quota attainment

• Build repeatable playbooks for inbound qualification and outbound prospecting, including ICP, personas, messaging, and AE handoff criteria

• Partner with Marketing to quickly convert inbound and product-led signals (signups, usage, events) into qualified opportunities

• Design and deploy AI workflows and automations for account research, prioritization, personalization, and reporting, freeing reps to focus on high-value conversations

• Continuously audit and improve SDR processes, from lead routing and follow-up speed to sequencing and handoffs, so the team operates efficiently at scale

• Build dashboards and reporting that give the team and leadership clear, real-time visibility into funnel health

• Use data to find bottlenecks, run experiments, and turn insights into action quickly

• Work with Sales leadership and RevOps to align on target accounts, territories, lead routing, and pipeline goals

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 2–4 years of direct, first-line management experience leading SDR/BDR teams

• A proven track record of exceptional coaching and development, with reps promoted into AE or leadership roles and teams that consistently hit or exceed targets

• Strong AI tooling and process skills, with hands-on experience building AI workflows that measurably improved sales productivity (e.g., Clay, AI agents, LLM-based prompts and automations)

• A data-driven “can do” mindset: you dig into the numbers, spot what’s broken, and fix it yourself rather than waiting for a solution

• Experience managing team performance through metrics, funnel analytics, and pipeline forecasting

• Prior experience as an individual contributor in sales development or a closing role

• Excellent communication and organizational skills, and comfort engaging technical buyers

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience building a sales development function from scratch at a high-growth startup

• Background in AI, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or other technical SaaS

• Experience with both high-volume inbound and targeted outbound motions

• Fluency with a modern GTM stack (e.g., Salesforce, Outreach, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Gong)

• Passion for developing early-career sales talent and an active interest in the AI/ML space

Fireworks AI’s goal is to provide competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided.

Why Fireworks?

• Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving.

• Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally.

• Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results.

• Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation.

Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.