Founding Business Development Manager

About Flagright: Flagright is an AI operating system for financial crime compliance used globally by Fortune 500 companies, large banks, fintechs, and fast growing startups. Flagright enables real-time risk detection, automated investigations, and intelligent decisioning, helping compliance teams operate at their full potential in the fight against financial crime. We operate as a lean, high-performance team with high individual ownership and direct access to leadership. The Role This is a founding leadership role. You'll take ownership of our global business development function, managing a geo-distributed team with a mandate to scale it in the near term. This role requires regular in-office presence to build team knowledge, strengthen collaboration, and support the ongoing development of the BDR team. Being together in person will be key to coaching, knowledge-sharing, onboarding, and creating a strong sales excellence culture. This is a pure team manager role where you will be responsible for performance management, coaching, talent development, hiring/firing, dispute resolution, process enforcement and success metrics. People who thrive at Flagright: - Have been knocked down before and gotten back up - Are resourceful—they figure things out with whatever tools are available - Have strong opinions and can defend them - Are hungry to learn & contribute - Want to work with no-BS people People who struggle here: - Need extensive hand-holding - View high expectations as “unreasonable” - Expect strict 9 to 6 boundaries - Can’t handle ambiguity or rejection - Prefer consistent routine over fast-changing priorities KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: - Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of 4 BDRs across multiple regions, with day-to-day accountability for activity, conversion, and pipeline targets - Scale the team: own hiring end-to-end, from profile definition and sourcing through interviewing, onboarding, and ramp - Support the outbound playbook — ICP and account segmentation, multi-channel sequences, messaging by persona and region, and qualification standards - Design territory and vertical coverage so a global team operates as one coordinated engine, not silos - Run forecasting and reporting on pipeline generation; present performance and insights directly to founders - Partner closely with Sales and Marketing to align on handoffs, SLAs, campaign follow-up, and feedback loops from the front line to product and positioning - Set the bar on culture: instill the habits, standards, and energy of a high-performing outbound team from day one WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR: - 5+ years in business development / sales development in B2B SaaS, including 2+ years managing BDR/SDR teams - Background at a Start/Scale-up (sub 200 employees) - Experience managing remote or geo-distributed teams across time zones — you know how to keep distributed people aligned, motivated, and accountable - A track record of hiring and ramping BDRs quickly; you've grown a team before, ideally in an early-stage or scale-up environment - Strong command of modern outbound: multi-channel prospecting, sales engagement platforms, CRM (e.g., HubSpot), and data-driven pipeline management - Builder's mindset — comfortable with ambiguity, first-principles thinking, and shipping process before it's perfect - Willing and able to sell yourself: you lead from the front and stay close to the conversations - Excellent written and spoken English; additional languages a plus given the global remit NICE TO HAVE: - Experience selling into regulated industries (e.g., fintech, compliance, FS) - Prior "founding" or first-manager role at a startup - Experience opening new geographic markets What we offer: - Leadership position with direct influence on Flagright’s global sales strategy - Report directly to the CEO - Product with clear, real-world differentiation - High-bar environment focused on execution, learning, and continuous improvement - Get equity from day 1 at a Y Combinator startup - Work alongside a highly competent, top-tier team, including professionals from Y Combinator, ex AWS, and Palantir - Enjoy a low-bureaucracy environment, minimal meetings, and an asynchronous communications culture