As a Business Development Representative at Upbound, you will own early-stage pipeline generation and serve as the first touchpoint in the sales cycle. You’ll play a critical role in growing our pipeline by engaging high-intent prospects who have shown interest in Crossplane, while also sourcing and developing new opportunities through targeted outbound efforts.

In this role, you will qualify inbound leads, execute focused outbound outreach, and set up high-quality discovery conversations for the sales team. You’ll build meaningful relationships within the community, research and engage target accounts, and support events, sales operations, and special projects. Serving as a key bridge between Marketing and Sales, your primary mission is to generate qualified pipeline and help fuel Upbound’s growth. You will report directly to the Head of BDR and work closely with both the Sales and Marketing teams.

What You'll Do

• Establish and maintain a collaborative, strategic partnership with the assigned AE’s.
• Engage marketing-qualified leads, event attendees, and high-intent prospects through thoughtful, multi-channel outreach.
• Target prospects through research and personalization using email, phone, LinkedIn, Slack communities, and other channels.
• Research accounts within defined segments and verticals to identify target personas and generate sales-qualified leads.
• Book qualified meetings with IT, engineering, and executive stakeholders for the Account Executives you support.
• Have meaningful discovery conversations to understand prospect challenges and articulate the value of Crossplane and Upbound.
• Outbound and source your own leads through various channels using research and creatively to book meetings.

What You'll Bring

• A Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a related field.
• 1–2 years of experience in sales, marketing, or a related role.
• Comfort operating in a technical environment; open source and/or infrastructure exposure is strongly preferred.
• Hunter mentality, resourcefulness, and self-starter. 
• A genuine interest in building relationships, networking, and starting conversations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience using sales and marketing tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, Marketo, ZoomInfo, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

A plus if you: 

• You’re familiar with Crossplane and/or Upbound
• Familiarity with CNCF or other open source cloud-native projects.
• You’ve worked at a Series A, B or C startup

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