Roles we recruit
Seven practices, 27 functions. Start at the practice when you cannot yet name the title; go straight to the function when you can.
Browse all 229 roles Brief us on a seatFlat 15% of first-year base · shortlist in 10 working days
Six seats sit under sales development, and most job specs treat them as one. We split them by the stage of the motion each one moves, screen for meetings that held rather than activity, and charge a flat 15% only once your hire starts.
Most briefs arrive titled SDR. Five of these seats will interview well for work that belongs to another, so we start with the stage that is broken, then the title.
The outbound motion, and the seat that owns each stage
Moves: named accounts researched and mapped
2 seats
New-logo prospecting into accounts that have never heard of you: research, multi-channel sequences and cold calls. Usually outbound only, often account-based.
Brief us when your pipeline depends on accounts that will never fill in a form, and you need someone to open them.
Multi-threading named enterprise accounts: mapping buying committees, working several personas at once and booking meetings that survive a long cycle.
Brief us when your AEs sell six-figure deals to committees, and a single-threaded meeting dies at the first objection.
Moves: reply and connect rates
1 seat
Volume outbound against a defined list: sequences, calls and social touches at a steady cadence, tuned for reply and connect rates.
Brief us when the ICP is clear, the list exists, and the gap is consistent first touches at volume.
Moves: speed to lead and qualification rate
1 seat
Replying to demo requests, trials and content leads within minutes, qualifying them and routing the right ones to sales.
Brief us when marketing produces leads that wait hours for a reply, or sales says the meetings are not qualified.
Moves: meetings held that an AE accepts
1 seat
Turning target accounts and inbound interest into qualified meetings an account executive accepts. The generalist seat: part outbound, part inbound, measured on meetings that hold.
Brief us when you need first meetings on AE calendars and the motion is not yet split into inbound and outbound.
Hire an SDRMoves: sourced pipeline and team attainment
1 seat
The team's number: hiring, coaching, capacity, messaging, tooling and the handover agreement with sales.
Brief us when you have three or more SDRs, results vary by person, and nobody owns the system they work in.
Measured on
Sales development attracts confident talkers, and a confident talker interviews well. We screen for the evidence underneath: what converted, what they changed when it did not, and how they take coaching.
We ask for held and accepted meetings against target for the last four quarters, then for the story behind the worst one. Booked-only numbers are where we dig.
Every SDR candidate runs a short live call against a persona from your brief before you meet them. We score the opener, the discovery questions and the first objection, not the polish.
We ask for a sequence they built and the reply rate it earned. Borrowing from a playbook is fine; knowing why it worked is the point.
We ask which piece of feedback changed their numbers, then check it with a former manager. Ramp speed in this seat is mostly a function of how fast someone takes coaching.
Not sure which seat you need? Tell us where meetings stall and we will tell you which of the six owns it, or that it is a sales problem rather than an SDR one.
Public US benchmarks, read October 2026. SDR and BDR pay is a base salary plus a variable paid on meetings or pipeline. The ring is Built In’s self-reported average total, a separate dataset from the Salary.com base bar, so read the gap as a sign of the variable rather than an exact figure. The account executive row is the seat an SDR usually moves into.
Each bar runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile, the middle half of reported pay.
Base salaryAverage total pay, base plus variable
SDR
Sales Development Representative
$56,156 to $67,489 base$83,110 average total
BDR
Business Development Representative
$72,007 to $87,689 base$91,805 average total
Account Executive
The usual next seat
$87,513 to $111,393 base$212,849 average total
Bars: base salary, 25th to 75th percentile, Salary.com benchmarks for the United States as of October 1, 2026. Rings: average total compensation (base plus additional cash, self-reported) from Built In, reviewed September 30 and October 1, 2026. Public aggregates, not ZaphyrRecruit placement data. Location, segment and quota design move every figure.
The clock starts when the brief is signed and stops when three to five calibrated candidates are in front of you. Most of that time is spent talking to people, not searching for them.
Day 1
Forty-five minutes with whoever the hire reports to. We leave with the number the seat owns, the range you can pay and the two or three things that genuinely disqualify.
Days 2 to 7
We build the list from people doing the job now, approach them directly and screen every name against the brief before it reaches you.
Days 8 to 10
Three to five people, each with a page: what they have run, why they fit this seat, pay expectations, notice period and where they are weak.
After the shortlist
Interviews run at your pace. We handle scheduling, references and the counter-offer conversation, and nothing is payable until your hire starts.
Three clients, quoted as they wrote to us about searches we ran for them. We publish no names or logos without permission.
In most teams an SDR qualifies inbound interest and a BDR prospects outbound into new accounts, but the titles are used loosely and plenty of companies use SDR for both. What matters is the motion. If the seat responds to leads, screen for speed and qualification. If it opens accounts that have never heard of you, screen for research, resilience and messaging. We brief against the motion, not the title.
We charge a flat 15% of the hire’s first-year base salary, payable only once they start. On a $60,000 base that is $9,000. Commission is not part of the calculation, there is no retainer, and nothing is payable if the search does not produce a hire.
Base salary for a US SDR runs $56,156 to $67,489 at the 25th to 75th percentile on Salary.com (October 2026), and Built In reports average total compensation of $83,110 once commission is included. The variable is usually paid on meetings held or on the pipeline they create. Location, segment and whether the seat is inbound or outbound move the number.
Ten working days from a signed brief to a shortlist of three to five calibrated candidates. Interviews and the offer then run at your pace. Strong SDR candidates usually have more than one process running, so a decision within a week of the first interview is what keeps them.
Usually an account executive, or a founder who is still closing. An SDR books meetings for someone else to run, so without an AE or a founder with time to take those meetings, the meetings have nowhere to go. Hire SDRs once someone can convert what they book and you know which accounts to send them after.
Yes. A Sales Development Manager is a different hire: they own the team’s number, the coaching and the handover with sales. We screen managers on the team results they produced and on how they hired, not on their own call metrics from years ago.
Yes. Several seats hired as one structure is how we run a pod: SDRs, a manager and the AE they feed, briefed together so the second and third hires do not restart the search. The same 15% applies to each hire, payable as each one starts.
Not always. Industry fluency shortens the ramp, so we look for people who have sold to your buyer or one close to it, but a strong SDR from an adjacent market often outperforms a weak one from yours. The brief decides which matters more, and we tell you which way we are leaning before the search starts.
Tell us where meetings stall and what the seat should own. We reply within one business day with which of the six seats it is and what it pays.
Most SDR searches are filled from people we already know, the week an employer briefs us, before an advert exists. Set up a job alert for sales development roles, or send your CV and we will come to you when a seat opens.
Sales Development sits in our Sales & Pipeline practice, next to the seats it feeds. If the gap is further down the funnel, start there.