The posting
About Nightfall:
Nightfall is the AI-native, unified data loss prevention and insider risk management platform that protects sensitive data across SaaS apps, GenAI tools, email, endpoint devices, and more. Hundreds of customers, spanning AI innovators to top 10 banks, trust Nightfall to detect and stop data exfiltration at scale. Nightfall enables organizations to innovate freely without the risks of losing intellectual property or exposing customer data. Our agentic platform helps security teams regain their time by putting data loss prevention on autopilot. With automatic remediation, security violations can be resolved automatically before they become incidents, and end-users can be automatically trained and coached in the moment to self-heal violations that they introduce.
Nightfall is backed by leading VC firms including Bain Capital Ventures (Enrique Salem - former CEO of Symantec), Venrock (early investors in Cloudflare), WestBridge Capital, Pear VC (early investors in Dropbox and Doordash), and a cadre of cybersecurity leaders including Frederic Kerrest (founder of Okta), Maynard Webb (former COO of eBay), Ryan Carlson (President of Chainguard), Kevin Mandia (founder of Mandiant), and many others.
About the role:
We're hiring our founding Director of Business Development to build Nightfall's sales development function from the ground up. You'll design the outbound and inbound motion, hire and lead the SDR team, and define the metrics that tell us whether it's working.
You'll sit between marketing and sales. You'll work with marketing to turn campaigns and inbound interest into meetings, and with our Enterprise and Commercial AEs to put qualified meetings on their calendars that turn into real pipeline.
This is a builder role. There's no playbook to inherit: you'll set the team structure, hiring plan, qualification standards and operating rhythm, and you'll be hands-on while the team gets off the ground.
- Team: Sales
- Reports to: Chief Revenue Officer
- Location: United States (remote)
- Travel: [ADD: travel %]
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Build the SDR team. Design the team structure, write the hiring plan, and recruit, onboard and ramp Nightfall's first SDRs.
- Design the outbound motion. Define target accounts and personas with sales leadership, build account tiering, sequences and multi-channel plays, and set the weekly operating rhythm.
- Own inbound follow-up. Set speed-to-lead and routing standards with marketing so every hand-raiser gets a fast, relevant response and the right ones become meetings.
- Define what success looks like. Set the metrics for the function, from activity and meetings held to qualified opportunities, pipeline and conversion, and report on them to sales leadership.
- Set qualification and handoff standards. Agree with AEs on what a qualified meeting is, how it's handed off, and how its quality is scored, so meetings turn into opportunities.
- Partner with marketing. Work with growth and field marketing on campaign follow-up, messaging, lead scoring and event outreach, and feed what you hear from the market back into campaigns.
- Partner with the field. Align SDRs to Enterprise and Commercial AEs and to our channel partners, and work target accounts together.
- Coach and develop. Run call reviews, messaging feedback and 1:1s, and build a career path from SDR to AE.
- Build the operating foundation. Own SDR tooling, data and reporting in Salesforce and our sequencing tools, working with RevOps, and propose the SDR comp plan.
- Work AI-forward. Use tools like Claude to speed up account research, personalization, list building and reporting, and teach the team to do the same.
WHAT YOU'LL BRING
- You've built an SDR or BDR team from the ground up, or led one through a major rebuild, at a B2B SaaS startup.
- Several years leading SDR or BDR teams, including hiring, ramping and coaching reps, and promoting them into AE roles.
- Experience selling into security or IT buyers, ideally CISOs and security teams at mid-market and enterprise companies.
- A track record of owning meetings, qualified opportunities and pipeline targets, with numbers you can walk us through.
- You've run both outbound and inbound motions and know how to prioritize between them.
- You've worked closely with marketing on campaigns, messaging and lead conversion.
- You've set qualification standards and SDR-to-AE handoff processes that AEs trusted.
- Fluency in Salesforce and a sequencing tool such as Outreach or Salesloft, and comfort building your own reports.
- You're AI-forward and already use tools like Claude or similar to automate and accelerate your work.
BONUS POINTS
- Experience in data security, DLP or an adjacent security category.
- Experience working with channel partners or resellers on joint pipeline. We're a channel-first company.
- You've built an SDR comp plan or a sales development career ladder.
HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED
1. 30 days: Learn our buyers, product and sales motion. Meet the AEs, marketing and channel teams, and audit how meetings and pipeline are generated today.
2. 60 days: Deliver the sales development plan: team structure, hiring plan, outbound and inbound playbooks, qualification and handoff standards, and the metrics we'll track. Start hiring.
3. 90 days: First SDRs hired or in process, outbound plays live, and a weekly report on meetings, qualified opportunities and pipeline that sales and marketing both trust.
Ongoing, we'll look at SDR-sourced pipeline, qualified meetings AEs accept, inbound conversion, team ramp and promotion, and how well sales and marketing see the team as a pipeline partner.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
1. Recruiter screen (30 min)
2. Hiring manager interview with our CRO (60 min)
3. Team interviews with marketing and sales: our Senior Growth Marketing Manager (45 min), an Enterprise AE (30 min) and our VP of Commercial Sales (45 min)
4. Take-home: a 30/60/90-day plan for building sales development at Nightfall, presented to our CRO and VP of Commercial Sales (60 min). AI use is welcome; we'll ask you to walk us through how you used it.
5. CEO interview (30 min)
If you need an accommodation at any point in the process, let your recruiter know.
PAY AND BENEFITS
The base salary range for this role is [ADD: min] to [ADD: max], plus variable compensation and equity. Final pay depends on level and experience.
We care about what you've built and how you think, not only the titles you've held. If this role excites you but you don't match every line, we'd still like to hear from you.
Environment
Nightfall AI takes pride in being an equal-opportunity employer. We value a diverse and global talent pool and the collaboration that results from having a diverse and inclusive team. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. Our hiring decisions are based exclusively on merit, qualifications, and business needs.
Compensation
Employee compensation will be determined based on interview performance, level of experience, specialization of skills, and market rate. During the offer discussion, your recruiter will review the finalized base salary, bonus (for applicable roles), benefits & perks, and stock options as they’ll be reflected in the offer letter.
