Sales Development Manager

Fireworks AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Fireworks AI seeks an SDR Manager to build and lead the first sales development team from the ground up. You will recruit, coach, and scale a group of SDRs who qualify inbound interest from developers and enterprises, while prospecting into high-value target accounts to fuel the Account Executive team.

You'll design repeatable playbooks, implement AI-powered workflows, and work with Marketing to convert product-led signals into qualified opportunities.

Qualifications

• 2–4 years of direct, first-line management experience leading SDR/BDR teams.
• Proven record of exceptional coaching and development with reps promoted to AE or leadership roles.
• Hands-on experience building AI workflows that improved sales productivity (e.g., AI agents, LLM-based prompts and automations).
• Data-driven mindset: use numbers to drive improvements and decisions.
• 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, and comfort engaging technical buyers.
• Experience building a SDR function from scratch at a high-growth startup is a plus.
• Background in AI, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or technical SaaS is valued.
• Fluency with GTM stacks (Salesforce, Outreach, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Gong).
• Passion for developing early-career sales talent and interest in AI/ML space.

Responsibilities

• Hire, onboard, and lead a team of SDRs, scaling as Fireworks grows.
• Coach reps through 1:1s, call/email reviews, and skill development; create clear BDR-to-AE path.
• Own team performance across activity, conversions, meetings booked, pipeline, and quota attainment.
• Build repeatable playbooks for inbound/outbound, including ICP, personas, messaging, and handoff criteria.
• Partner with Marketing to convert signals into qualified opportunities.
• Design AI workflows for account research, prioritization, personalization, and reporting.
• Audit SDR processes to ensure efficiency at scale.
• Build dashboards and reporting for funnel health and leadership visibility.
• Use data to identify bottlenecks, run experiments, and translate insights into action.
• Align with Sales leadership and RevOps on target accounts, territories, and pipeline goals.

Skills

SDR management

Coaching

AI tooling

Data-driven

Sales analytics

SDR/AE experience

Communication

Build SDR function

AI / cloud background

GTM tools

Talent development

Tools

Clay

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.