Director, Business Development
Sales & Business Development
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Posted on Jul 17, 2026
About Leena AI
Leena AI is building the definitive AI platform for enterprise employee experience. Our flagship product, AI Colleague Studio, deploys autonomous AI colleagues that handle complex HR, IT, and finance workflows across the world's largest enterprises. Backed by top-tier investors, we grew nearly 4x last year and are rewriting the rules of how enterprises adopt AI. North America is our largest and fastest-growing market — and the revenue engine behind it runs from our Bangalore office. If you want to build the machine that feeds the enterprise pipeline at scale — not just manage a dial floor — this is the seat.
The Role
We're looking for a Director of Sales Development to own MQL-to-pipeline conversion for Leena AI's North American market, reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer. Your OKR is simple and unforgiving: convert marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified opportunities, and convert those opportunities into real pipeline dollars that sales can close. You're measured on SQL volume and pipeline generated — not activity, not dials, not "conversations started".
You'll lead a team of ~20 SDRs and 3 SDR managers across four motions: inbound, LinkedIn, events, and ABM —with an actively growing ABM function and a West Coast expansion already in flight, including a new SDR manager hire. Some of this team is built; some of it you'll build.
This is not a volume play. The SDR org you run is data-driven, experiment-heavy, and AI-native. You treat outreach as a precision system — testing messaging, sequencing, channel mix, and timing with the same rigor a growth team applies to paid media.
You operate as a peer to the Director of Demand Generation and the VP of Product Marketing, both based in New York. You partner tightly with both — DG feeds you the MQLs, PMM gives you the narrative and competitive positioning — but your conversion engine, your team, and your number are yours.
This role is based in our Bangalore office, working on an EST time shift. Your entire team sits here. Experience leading large SDR teams selling into the North American enterprise market is non-negotiable.
What You'll Do
Own the Conversion Engine: MQL → SQL → Opportunity. You own the model, the rates, the targets, and the levers.
When conversion drops, you diagnose it before the weekly review — channel mix, lead quality, rep performance, messaging fatigue, timing — and you've already shipped the fix.
Run Four Motions, One Machine: Inbound response, LinkedIn outreach, event follow-up, and ABM — each with its own playbook, metrics, and team. You build the operating system that makes all four run in concert, not in silos. The handoff between DG campaigns and SDR execution is seamless because you engineered it that way.
Scale the ABM Engine: The ABM SDR function is early and growing fast. You'll build the account-level operating model — account loads, activity frameworks, multi-thread strategies, and SQL targets per rep — and hire the team to run it. ABM is the highest-leverage bet in the org; you treat it accordingly.Open the West Coast: Stand up West Coast SDR operations — hiring a manager, building the pod, and extending coverage to match buyer time zones. You scope it, staff it, and make it productive fast.
Build & Lead at Scale: 20+ SDRs and 3 managers today, growing. You hire well, develop fast, and promote from within. You set the performance bar, run the operating cadence, and build managers who can run their pods without you in the room. The team you build is one other functions want to recruit from.
Data & Experimentation as the Operating System: You run the SDR org like a product team runs a feature. A/B test messaging, sequence structures, channel mix, call timing, and persona targeting — measure everything, kill what doesn't work, double down on what does. Every decision has data behind it; gut feel is the hypothesis, not the answer.
Partner with Demand Gen & PMM: DG owns lead volume and quality; PMM owns positioning and competitive intelligence. You're the bridge between what they build and what sales receives. When MQL quality shifts, you flag it with data. When messaging isn't landing, you bring the signal from the front line. The feedback loop between your team and theirs is tight, fast, and specific.
Pipeline Accountability: You don't just generate SQLs — you own the pipeline they create. You track SQL-to-opportunity conversion, deal progression from SDR-sourced pipeline, and average opportunity size. If the pipeline isn't materializing downstream, that's your problem too — and you work it with Sales leadership until it's fixed.
Rebuild It AI-Native: Use LLMs, AI coding tools, and automation as your default operating system. Personalization at scale, lead research and enrichment, sequence optimization, performance analytics, rep coaching insights — if a manual process exists, your instinct is to automate it. Your team operates the same way.
Who You Are
Proven at Scale in NA Enterprise: You've personally led an SDR org of 15+ reps selling into North American enterprise accounts. You can point to the SQL numbers you hit, the pipeline you generated, and the conversion rates you improved — with the metrics to prove it. This is the bar, and it's non-negotiable.
8–12 Years in Sales Development / Revenue Operations: Progressive SDR leadership roles at high-growth B2B SaaS companies — ideally enterprise, ideally technical products. You've run inbound and outbound, managed multi-motion SDR teams, and operated against a pipeline number with real accountability. Bonus if you've built an ABM SDR function from scratch.
People Leader Who Builds: 3+ years directly managing SDR managers and reps at scale. You don't just manage — you build teams, develop managers, create career paths, and drive a culture where top performers want to stay and grow. You've scaled a team from good to great, not just inherited one that was already working.
Data-Obsessed Operator: You live in the funnel metrics — conversion rates by stage, by source, by rep, by motion. You can build the model from scratch, spot the leading indicator before the lagging one confirms it, and make resource allocation decisions on evidence. You're allergic to activity-for-activity's-sake and you don't tolerate it from your managers.
Peer to Directors and VPs: You sit across from a Director of Demand Gen, a VP of PMM, and Sales leadership in New York, push back where needed, and drive alignment across time zones without escalating. You influence through clarity, data, and credibility — not proximity or authority.
Builder Mentality: You see a gap — a missing playbook, a broken handoff, a reporting blind spot — and you fix it. You'd rather ship a working v1 today than spec a perfect v2 next month. Scrappy > polished.AI Builder, Not Just AI User (Non-Negotiable): You don't just prompt AI — you build with it. You've shipped real things: personalization engines, lead scoring models, enrichment automations, coaching dashboards, sequence optimization tools. You can go from "we need this" to a working prototype before most people finish scoping the requirements. As a leader, you set this standard for your team. This is table stakes.
Communication That Cuts Through: Crisp writing, clear thinking. You can distill a conversion problem or a resource request into a one-page memo that drives the call the same day — across time zones, with stakeholders in New York.
EST Shift, Bangalore-Based: You're comfortable — or already experienced — working US East Coast hours from India. The entire SDR team sits in Bangalore; this is where the work happens.
Skills: pipeline,sales,business development
Leena AI is building the definitive AI platform for enterprise employee experience. Our flagship product, AI Colleague Studio, deploys autonomous AI colleagues that handle complex HR, IT, and finance workflows across the world's largest enterprises. Backed by top-tier investors, we grew nearly 4x last year and are rewriting the rules of how enterprises adopt AI. North America is our largest and fastest-growing market — and the revenue engine behind it runs from our Bangalore office. If you want to build the machine that feeds the enterprise pipeline at scale — not just manage a dial floor — this is the seat.
The Role
We're looking for a Director of Sales Development to own MQL-to-pipeline conversion for Leena AI's North American market, reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer. Your OKR is simple and unforgiving: convert marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified opportunities, and convert those opportunities into real pipeline dollars that sales can close. You're measured on SQL volume and pipeline generated — not activity, not dials, not "conversations started".
You'll lead a team of ~20 SDRs and 3 SDR managers across four motions: inbound, LinkedIn, events, and ABM —with an actively growing ABM function and a West Coast expansion already in flight, including a new SDR manager hire. Some of this team is built; some of it you'll build.
This is not a volume play. The SDR org you run is data-driven, experiment-heavy, and AI-native. You treat outreach as a precision system — testing messaging, sequencing, channel mix, and timing with the same rigor a growth team applies to paid media.
You operate as a peer to the Director of Demand Generation and the VP of Product Marketing, both based in New York. You partner tightly with both — DG feeds you the MQLs, PMM gives you the narrative and competitive positioning — but your conversion engine, your team, and your number are yours.
This role is based in our Bangalore office, working on an EST time shift. Your entire team sits here. Experience leading large SDR teams selling into the North American enterprise market is non-negotiable.
What You'll Do
Own the Conversion Engine: MQL → SQL → Opportunity. You own the model, the rates, the targets, and the levers.
When conversion drops, you diagnose it before the weekly review — channel mix, lead quality, rep performance, messaging fatigue, timing — and you've already shipped the fix.
Run Four Motions, One Machine: Inbound response, LinkedIn outreach, event follow-up, and ABM — each with its own playbook, metrics, and team. You build the operating system that makes all four run in concert, not in silos. The handoff between DG campaigns and SDR execution is seamless because you engineered it that way.
Scale the ABM Engine: The ABM SDR function is early and growing fast. You'll build the account-level operating model — account loads, activity frameworks, multi-thread strategies, and SQL targets per rep — and hire the team to run it. ABM is the highest-leverage bet in the org; you treat it accordingly.Open the West Coast: Stand up West Coast SDR operations — hiring a manager, building the pod, and extending coverage to match buyer time zones. You scope it, staff it, and make it productive fast.
Build & Lead at Scale: 20+ SDRs and 3 managers today, growing. You hire well, develop fast, and promote from within. You set the performance bar, run the operating cadence, and build managers who can run their pods without you in the room. The team you build is one other functions want to recruit from.
Data & Experimentation as the Operating System: You run the SDR org like a product team runs a feature. A/B test messaging, sequence structures, channel mix, call timing, and persona targeting — measure everything, kill what doesn't work, double down on what does. Every decision has data behind it; gut feel is the hypothesis, not the answer.
Partner with Demand Gen & PMM: DG owns lead volume and quality; PMM owns positioning and competitive intelligence. You're the bridge between what they build and what sales receives. When MQL quality shifts, you flag it with data. When messaging isn't landing, you bring the signal from the front line. The feedback loop between your team and theirs is tight, fast, and specific.
Pipeline Accountability: You don't just generate SQLs — you own the pipeline they create. You track SQL-to-opportunity conversion, deal progression from SDR-sourced pipeline, and average opportunity size. If the pipeline isn't materializing downstream, that's your problem too — and you work it with Sales leadership until it's fixed.
Rebuild It AI-Native: Use LLMs, AI coding tools, and automation as your default operating system. Personalization at scale, lead research and enrichment, sequence optimization, performance analytics, rep coaching insights — if a manual process exists, your instinct is to automate it. Your team operates the same way.
Who You Are
Proven at Scale in NA Enterprise: You've personally led an SDR org of 15+ reps selling into North American enterprise accounts. You can point to the SQL numbers you hit, the pipeline you generated, and the conversion rates you improved — with the metrics to prove it. This is the bar, and it's non-negotiable.
8–12 Years in Sales Development / Revenue Operations: Progressive SDR leadership roles at high-growth B2B SaaS companies — ideally enterprise, ideally technical products. You've run inbound and outbound, managed multi-motion SDR teams, and operated against a pipeline number with real accountability. Bonus if you've built an ABM SDR function from scratch.
People Leader Who Builds: 3+ years directly managing SDR managers and reps at scale. You don't just manage — you build teams, develop managers, create career paths, and drive a culture where top performers want to stay and grow. You've scaled a team from good to great, not just inherited one that was already working.
Data-Obsessed Operator: You live in the funnel metrics — conversion rates by stage, by source, by rep, by motion. You can build the model from scratch, spot the leading indicator before the lagging one confirms it, and make resource allocation decisions on evidence. You're allergic to activity-for-activity's-sake and you don't tolerate it from your managers.
Peer to Directors and VPs: You sit across from a Director of Demand Gen, a VP of PMM, and Sales leadership in New York, push back where needed, and drive alignment across time zones without escalating. You influence through clarity, data, and credibility — not proximity or authority.
Builder Mentality: You see a gap — a missing playbook, a broken handoff, a reporting blind spot — and you fix it. You'd rather ship a working v1 today than spec a perfect v2 next month. Scrappy > polished.AI Builder, Not Just AI User (Non-Negotiable): You don't just prompt AI — you build with it. You've shipped real things: personalization engines, lead scoring models, enrichment automations, coaching dashboards, sequence optimization tools. You can go from "we need this" to a working prototype before most people finish scoping the requirements. As a leader, you set this standard for your team. This is table stakes.
Communication That Cuts Through: Crisp writing, clear thinking. You can distill a conversion problem or a resource request into a one-page memo that drives the call the same day — across time zones, with stakeholders in New York.
EST Shift, Bangalore-Based: You're comfortable — or already experienced — working US East Coast hours from India. The entire SDR team sits in Bangalore; this is where the work happens.
Skills: pipeline,sales,business development