Business Development Representative (BDR) Manager

Cobalt is hiring a BDR Manager to lead a team of BDRs spanning North America and EMEA. This role involves coaching and developing reps while optimizing the AI SDR engine for inbound. The manager will also partner with Marketing and Sales to enhance outbound execution and drive SQO generation.

Responsibilities:

• Manage, coach, and develop a team of outbound BDRs across North America and EMEA time zones
• Run regular 1:1s, call reviews, and pipeline coaching to improve conversion at each funnel stage
• Coach reps on executive-level communication, discovery, account research, and strategic prospecting for enterprise and mid-market conversations
• Own hiring, onboarding, and ramp planning for the outbound team
• Set and manage quotas, and hold reps accountable to activity and outcome metrics
• Drive improvements to messaging, sequencing, and personalization
• Build a high-performance, low-ego team culture rooted in continuous improvement and candid feedback
• Partner with Growth Marketing and Sales leadership to translate campaign and ABM priorities into outbound execution
• Own the outbound contribution to SQO targets; report on pipeline health, conversion, and forecast accuracy
• Establish operational rigor around activity metrics, conversion rates, and pipeline quality, ensuring consistent execution across the team
• Diagnose and fix bottlenecks in the outbound funnel (deliverability, response rates, meeting-to-SQO conversion)
• Bring front-line market and prospect feedback back to Growth Marketing and Sales leadership to sharpen targeting and messaging
• Partner cross-functionally with Growth Marketing and RevOps to co-own and maximize the performance of our inbound AI SDR engine
• Monitor response quality, conversion, and escalation accuracy; drive iterative improvements to prompts, routing logic, and qualification criteria
• Recommend and implement process changes to improve human/AI handoff on inbound leads

Requirements:

• 5+ years managing an outbound BDR/SDR team in cybersecurity
• Demonstrated ability to build process, not just execute an existing one: you've written a playbook, fixed a broken funnel, or stood up a program with limited resources
• Proven track record hitting SQO/pipeline targets through a managed outbound team
• Experience managing distributed teams across multiple time zones
• Hands-on fluency with sales engagement tooling (Salesloft or Outreach), sales intelligence tools (Apollo, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator), AI SDR tools (Qualified), and dialers (Orum, Nooks)
• Comfort working with or overseeing AI-assisted sales tooling: you don't need to build it, but you need to evaluate and improve it
• Strong analytical skills; you can read a funnel report and immediately spot where the leak is
• Direct communication style; comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback
• High tolerance for ambiguity and fast iteration; you're energized by 'figure it out' environments, not looking for a fully built machine
• Experience in cybersecurity, PTaaS, or a related technical B2B category
• Prior exposure to AI SDR or conversational AI tooling in a GTM context
• Direct experience building a BDR playbook from a blank page