Smith.ai builds AI voice agents that redefine how SMBs handle phone calls—allowing businesses to book appointments, take payments, and manage complex call flows without missing a beat. We serve a wide range of businesses, from law firms to home contractors and many other service-based companies, leveraging the latest in LLMs, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech to deliver human-like conversation at scale. With thousands of SMBs already trusting Smith.ai (and staying with us thanks to world-class retention), we’re driving the next wave of AI innovation where it matters most: real-world customer interactions.

About the Role

Smith.ai is looking for a Senior Manager, Business Development (BDR) to lead and scale our pipeline generation organization. Today, our inbound engine is a major growth driver and at the same time, we’re building our outbound motion from the ground up, with early hires already generating strong traction.

This role will lead the BDR organization responsible for converting inbound demand and executing outbound prospecting programs that generate qualified pipeline for our Account Executives. You will manage a growing team that includes BDR managers, team leads, and individual contributors in place and ensure operational excellence, strong coaching, and consistent pipeline performance. You’ll partner closely with sales leadership, marketing and operations to execute and refine Smith.ai’s outbound motion while continuing to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of our inbound pipeline engine.

We’re not looking for someone to simply maintain the program—we’re looking for a builder who can take something that already works well and level it up across people, process, and tools.

This is a high-impact leadership role for someone who thrives in a fast-paced growth environment and loves building teams that consistently outperform.

What You’ll Get to Do

Scale the Inbound Pipeline Engine

• Lead and develop the team responsible for qualifying and converting inbound demand, including BDR managers, team leads, and individual contributors.
• Improve response times, qualification frameworks, and meeting conversion rates to maximize inbound pipeline creation.
• Establish performance expectations, coaching frameworks, and career development paths for BDR talent.
• Monitor funnel metrics and identify opportunities to improve pipeline productivity and inbound conversion.
• Partner with Marketing to maximize the effectiveness of inbound lead generation.

Execute and Scale Outbound Programs

• Partner closely with outbound sales leadership to execute and refine Smith.ai’s outbound strategy.
• Coach BDR teams on prospecting, messaging, and multi-channel outreach.
• Own outbound meeting generation and pipeline targets while ensuring operational rigor across CRM and sales engagement tools.
• Identify insights from prospect conversations and outreach activity to improve targeting and messaging.
• Develop early-career sales professionals and create clear growth paths from BDR to Account Executive.

What You’ll Bring

1. You’re SMART – a quick learner, curious, and business-savvy with a strategic mindset.
2. You’re WIRED FOR GREATNESS – you’re deeply motivated to achieve ambitious goals and develop others to do the same.
3. You ACT WITH URGENCY – you move quickly, execute relentlessly, and get things done.
4. You’re HIGHLY COLLABORATIVE – you bring no ego and believe great teams win together.

Leadership & Functional Skills

• BDR Leadership Experience – a proven track record of managing and developing BDR teams in high-growth technology environments.
• Organizational Leadership – experience managing team leads, managers, or multi-layer teams is strongly preferred.
  Pipeline Generation Expertise – strong understanding of inbound lead management and outbound prospecting.
• Coaching and Talent Development – demonstrated ability to develop early-career sales talent into high performers.
• AI Fluent or AI Curious – understands how modern AI tools and sales technology can improve prospect research, personalization, workflow automation, and overall team productivity.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience in BDR / SDR leadership roles
• Experience managing high-performing pipeline generation teams in SaaS or AI companies
• Prior quota-carrying sales experience preferred
• Experience selling to SMB customers is a plus
• Experience in growth-stage companies strongly preferred

Life at Smith.ai

Here at Smith.ai, we’re laser-focused on our mission of helping small and medium businesses succeed. We strive to test, learn, and improve, while continuously developing our solutions, our operations, and our team members. We’re a fast-growing and dynamic startup, with 500+ team members globally, that values collaboration and innovative thinking. We are an equal opportunity employer and believe diversity makes teams better and that discrimination based on race, gender, or anything else is self-defeating.