Sales Development Representative, Vanilla Steel
3-5 days a week in office
European marketplace for metals
Be an early applicant
European marketplace for metals
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
3-5 days a week in office
21-100 employees
Company mission
To create digital solutions to simplify the steel trade.
Role
Who you are
- You are genuinely comfortable picking up the phone, and you like finding smarter ways to work. The one non-negotiable: you can sell in German. Everything else you can grow into here
- Excellent written and verbal communication in German (C1 or C2 must have, native not required) and solid English. You can run an outbound call with a German industrial customer end to end, and you are not thrown by a cold conversation
- Enrolled student or recent graduate. We care about how you think and what you have built, not your years of experience
- Comfortable with software, and keen to use AI tools like Cursor or Claude to work smarter. If you can build or automate things yourself, even better, though you do not need to be an engineer
- Resourceful and thick-skinned. You take initiative instead of waiting to be told, and a "no" does not slow you down
- Organized, and genuinely bothered by messy data
- Based in Berlin or relocating before your start date, and legally permitted to work in Germany
- Nice to have: your own outreach or sales experience; a side project you have shipped; a portfolio, brand, or content you have built (a site, a social account, a newsletter); Python, React, or GTM tools like Clay, Apollo or HubSpot
What the job involves
- This is our first GTM hire below founder level, focused on the DACH market. You will be on the phone in German every day
- We are a Berlin-based startup transforming how industrial materials are bought and sold across Europe. One of the oldest industries in the world still runs on Excel, PDF and email. We are replacing that with AI that runs the buying and selling workflow end to end, increasing liquidity, speeding up transactions and reducing waste for hundreds of steel and metal distributors
- We have strong early traction, real enterprise customers and committed investors. We are a lean, technical team scaling our enterprise pilots and building the AI infrastructure underneath them
- 1. Reach out and close
- Own our outbound: call and message decision-makers at steel traders and stockholders across the DACH region, in German, every day. Get past the gatekeeper, open the conversation, and book qualified meetings for the team. Track follow-ups so no warm lead ever goes cold, and prepare the pre-call briefs that make each conversation land
- 2. Build the pipeline
- Build and verify our target lists: the right companies, mapped to the right person (Head of Sales, branch manager, MD). Keep our CRM (Attio) clean and trustworthy so the whole team can rely on it
- 3. Extend our AI outbound engine
- Improve the internal AI tooling that powers our outreach: research, enrichment and message drafting. Wire in new data sources and automate the manual steps that slow you down. You will use AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude) to ship, not just specify
- 4. Help build the brand
- Help shape how our software business shows up in the world: our brand, our messaging, and our presence on social media. Bring ideas for how we look and sound, help grow our audience across the channels that matter, and keep everything consistent as the product grows
Application process
- Send us your CV. If you have built something, a site, a repo, a newsletter, a social account, a portfolio, add the link to your CV or drop it in the cover letter field. It does not have to be polished, we just want something concrete to look at
Our take
Vanilla Steel’s online marketplace makes it easier for companies to buy and sell excess steel across the EU. By connecting producers to buyers at regular auctions, both parties are able to cut down on negotiation time and administration while helping address industry-wide issues such as overproduction, excess capacity and slow-moving inventory.
The company's co-founders have previous industry experience at global leader Thyssenkrupp, where they met and conceptualized the idea for Vanilla Steel. As Europe’s only current independent digital platform solely for steel, the company has already carved out a solid market niche and built a client base sapnning more than 50 countries.
Vanilla Steel has been backed by June Fund as well as Seedcamp and Mustard Seed Maz. It is looking to connect with even more suppliers, and to bring additional digital solutions to a traditionally analogue industry.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Jul 2021
$4m
SEED
Jun 2021
$0.1m
GRANT
Total funding: $4.1m
Company benefits
- Unique opportunity to join a promising Berlin B2B start-up as an early employee
- Work closely with an experienced Founder team
- Unrivalled autonomy with flexible schedules and ownership
- Open and fun shared working environment/culture
- Office located in the heart of Berlin.
- Laptop assigned. Apple/Linux/Windows
Company HQ
Frohnau, Berlin, Germany
Leadership
Matthias Affeldt
(CTO)IT & e-commerce entrepreneur. Former entrepreneur in residence at Thyssenkrupp Steel, founder & former CEO of internet company Atfogo, former CTO at XOM Materials.
Alexis Ducros
(CEO)Former entrepreneur in residence at Thyssenkrupp Steel, former deputy manager at mobile digital services platform Kardham Connect, former France MD at news platform Upday.
Clifford Ondara
(Managing Director)Former entrepreneur in residence at Thyssenkrupp Steel, Head of Business Development & Finance at B2B procurement platform Kreatize, Senior Management Consultant at chemicals manufacturer BASF.
Simon Zühlke
(Managing Director)Public speaker & entrepreneur. Co-founder & VP PR of public speaking club Toastmasters International, former entrepreneur in residence at Thyssenkrupp Steel, country lead DACH at JobTeaser.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 1 more job at Vanilla Steel