Upbound is the company behind Crossplane, the open source project which started the control plane revolution in the cloud native community. Upbound is redefining how modern infrastructure is built. As the creators of Crossplane and the pioneers of the Intelligent Control Plane, we are leading the shift toward agentic infrastructure: platforms that reason, adapt, and operate alongside AI-native systems.
As the Sr. Sales Development Representative, you will lead the development of new business and represent Upbound as the first touch point of the sales cycle. You’ll have the opportunity to help grow sales and marketing operations from the ground up and act as the critical bridge between the sales and marketing lead lifecycles.
What You'll Do- Establish and maintain a collaborative, strategic partnership with the assigned AE’s.
- Conduct outreach to community qualified leads and community-engaged accounts, finding creative ways to engage with the Crossplane community and find creative solutions to help businesses scale.
- Conduct outreach to high-intent, marketing qualified accounts. This often requires leveraging existing marketing data to research and identify the right personas at some of the world’s largest companies,
- Conduct outreach with Crossplane community members and target accounts in order to generate new sales opportunities.
- Find new business. Conduct research into companies in specific market segments/verticals, identify key target personas, and generate SQLs
- Make outbound calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages to identify and qualify potential new customers.
- Have meaningful conversations with prospects to understand the challenges they face.
- Report on progress to management across key metrics and SLAs, such as outbound activity, lead status, meetings completed, opportunities generated, and conversion rates.
- Stay up-to-date on industry trends, market conditions, and competitor activities to inform your messaging and provide valuable insights to your AE.
- 2-3 years of experience as an SDR, demand generation specialist, or related field with proven success in sourcing, qualifying, and driving new pipeline.
- A high level of comfort in a technical space. Open source, cloud, and/or infrastructure experience is preferred.
- Hunter mentality, resourcefulness, and self-starter.
- Enjoy building relationships, networking and creating new connections.
- Strong interpersonal, communication and customer service skills.
- Experience with marketing and sales tools such as Salesforce, Outreach, Zoominfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Marketo and other lead generation tools
A plus if you:
- You’re familiar with Crossplane and/or Upbound
- You’re familiar with cloud-based infrastructure or consumption based billing models
- You’ve worked at a Series A, B or C startup
#LI-REMOTE
At Upbound, you’ll help shape the systems and strategies that drive predictable, scalable growth in a product-led company embracing usage-based models. If you're excited to build from the ground up, work with cutting-edge cloud technologies, and directly impact how revenue is generated and scaled—this is your seat at the table.
About Upbound
Upbound is pioneering infrastructure platforms for the Agentic AI Era, serving Fortune 500 companies and platform engineers across more than 100 countries. The company empowers infrastructure and platform teams with Intelligent Control Planes - based on Kubernetes and Crossplane - that provision, operate, and adapt so platforms are ready for both humans and AI agents. Upbound is the creator and primary maintainer of Crossplane, the popular open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes, with over 100 million downloads and adoption by more than 1,000 teams worldwide. A Series B startup backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Altimeter Capital, and Intel Capital, Upbound has raised $69M to date. For more information, visit www.upbound.io.
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