Sales Development Representative San Francisco, CA

Goodfire; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market competitive salary

Equity

Competitive benefits

Job summary

Goodfire is seeking a Sales Development Representative in San Francisco to engage with technical leaders in AI. This role emphasizes high ownership, curiosity, and personalized outreach without generic scripts.

You will work with our Field Team and founders to shape account strategy and actively contribute to our mission of understanding AI systems. Ideal candidates will have experience in technical sales and strong organizational skills.

Join us in a vibrant in-person work environment, five days a week, with competitive salary and equity offerings.

Qualifications

• Ability to learn and communicate technical products quickly.
• Strong written communication skills with attention to detail.
• High agency and comfort in ambiguous scenarios.

Responsibilities

• Build outbound pipeline by researching AI labs and teams.
• Craft personalized outreach based on account research.
• Create the first version of the SDR playbook.
• Partner with GTM and Field teams to drive strategy.
• Maintain CRM hygiene and reporting.

Skills

Technical product learning

Written communication

Organizational skills

Persistence

Job description

Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building.

Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now.

We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others.

About the role

We're looking for a Sales Development Representative to be the first person who earns the attention of the technical leaders building the next generation of AI systems. This role demands curiosity, precision, and persistence: the ability to understand who is training models, recognize where Goodfire can create value, and start conversations that become strategic partnerships.

This is a high-ownership role where you will help build the earliest motion for reaching frontier AI builders. You won't be running generic sales scripts; you'll research accounts deeply, craft targeted outreach, learn from every interaction, and help define how Goodfire creates pipeline in a category that is still being formed.

You'll work closely with our Field Team, GTM, and founders to translate market signals into better messaging and better account strategy. The strongest person for this role is intellectually curious, comfortable with technical products, and motivated by opening doors with people who are hard to reach.

Key responsibilities

• Build high-quality outbound pipeline: identify and research the AI labs, platform teams, and model builders where Goodfire can create meaningful value
• Craft deeply personalized outreach: translate account research, product signals, research milestones, and market context into precise messages that earn attention
• Create the first version of our SDR playbook: test channels, messaging, sequences, and qualification criteria in a market where the standard SaaS playbook will not work
• Partner with GTM and Field teams: bring signal from prospects back into account strategy, campaign design, and early sales conversations
• Maintain rigorous pipeline operations: own CRM hygiene, handoffs, follow-up, and reporting so the team can understand what is working and scale it

What you’ll bring

Required experience

• Demonstrated ability to learn technical products quickly and communicate clearly with technical or research-oriented buyers.
• Excellent written communication and attention to detail; your outbound should feel researched, specific, and worth replying to.
• High agency, persistence, and comfort operating without a fully built playbook.
• Strong organizational habits and ability to manage many high-quality follow-ups without letting details drop.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in SDR, AE, growth, founder‑led sales, or another role where you created opportunities from scratch.
• Familiarity with AI/ML teams, infrastructure, developer tools, research organizations, or enterprise technical buyers.
• Track record of excellence in a high‑growth startup or similarly ambiguous environment.
• Experience using research, product usage, community, or event signals to identify high‑intent prospects.

Our values

Put mission and team first

All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.

Improve constantly

We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.

Take ownership and initiative

There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self‑driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building.

Action today

We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.

Where we work

We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco HQ. We are in person 5 days a week, with one company‑wide remote week per month.

What we offer

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world‑class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.