Business Development Lead, Perplexity
Enterprise
$180-240k
OTE
Conversational AI-powered search tool
Be an early applicant
Conversational AI-powered search tool
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$180-240k
OTE
1001+ employees
Company mission
To advance the way people discover and share information.
Role
Who you are
- 4+ years in SaaS sales or business development, including 1 to 2+ years directly managing a BDR or SDR team
- Proven track record of building or scaling a pipeline generation team in a high-growth environment
- Prior closing experience strongly preferred
- Skilled at coaching reps on outbound prospecting, qualification, and executive engagement
- Data-driven operating style with the ability to define, track, and improve conversion metrics
- Experience with modern prospecting tools and AI-native sales workflows
- Exceptional written and verbal communication; comfortable engaging with senior stakeholders internally and externally
- Experience with CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce)
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
What the job involves
- Perplexity is seeking a Business Development Lead to build and scale our enterprise BDR team
- In this role, you will hire, coach, and lead a team of BDRs generating qualified pipeline for our Enterprise Account Executives
- This role is ideal for a hands-on sales leader who has built pipeline generation functions before and wants to shape the outbound motion of one of the fastest-growing enterprise businesses in AI
- Hire, onboard, and coach a team of BDRs, establishing the ramp plan, operating cadence, and performance bar
- Own the BDR contribution to sourced pipeline and qualified opportunities
- Design and iterate the outbound playbook, including account targeting, vertical messaging, and multi-channel prospecting
- Partner with Enterprise AEs on account planning, lead routing, and handoff quality
- Build vertical fluency on the team so reps can hold credible conversations with buyers in industries such as Financial Services, Legal, Life Sciences, and Consulting
- Coach reps to position Perplexity's full product suite, matching the right entry point to each account
- Run the operating rhythm: weekly 1:1s, call and message reviews, pipeline inspection, and a clear performance scoreboard
- Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, RevOps, and Strategic Finance on lead quality, source attribution, and compensation design
- Develop BDRs into future Account Executives and build a strong internal talent pipeline
Our take
As AI continues to drive changes in both business operations and day-to-day lives, Perplexity delivers an intelligent search engine powered by conversational AI, to improve search outcomes and "unlock the power of knowledge" for all.
Reaching impressive heights of 22M monthly visits, Perplexity's "ask anything" method of search is clearly a popular one. And what sets it apart from other search engines is in its answers, which are concise and fully cited, responding to the user query rather than simply providing a place in which they can scroll to find it themselves.
The company has raised substantial funding, with contributions from former execs at companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Quora, demonstrating the interest that it has drummed up in the space. Having doubled its annual recurring revenue between 2023 and 24, this investment has allowed Perplexity to continue building out its product, and accelerate growth into the future.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Sep 2025
$200m
LATE VC
Jul 2025
$100m
LATE VC
Total funding: $1.8bn
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Aravind Srinivas
(Co-Founder, President & CEO)Former Research Scientist at OpenAI, who has interned in Research at Google and Deep Mind. Obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Denis Yarats
(Co-Founder & CTO)Prior to co-founding Perplexity in 2022, Denis was an AI Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research, a Staff ML Engineer at Quora, and a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.
Johnny Ho
(Co-Founder & CSO)Previously a Quantitative Trader at Tower Research Capital, and Engineer at Quora.
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