Business Development Lead

BD Lead @Kombo

📍 NYC (On-site)

📍 $160,000-$220,000 + equity

⏰ Full-time

📌 Reports to: Head of Growth

TL;DR

Kombo (YC S22) builds the infrastructure layer for hire-to-retire employee data. We power recruitment platforms, benefits providers, and spend management tools by giving them reliable access to candidate and employee data across any HRIS, LMS, ATS, or payroll system their customers use.

We are looking for a Business Development Lead to build and lead a best-in-class outbound organization and make pipeline generation predictable, scalable, and high quality. This is a critical leadership role with direct ownership of one of our top-priority metrics as a business, and people management responsibility for a growing BDR team.

This role comes at a pivotal moment: outbound is already our primary growth engine, and we are now entering the next chapter – scaling it from strong early traction into a world-class, multi-region operation.

About Kombo

Kombo is building the unified API for HR, payroll, LMS, and recruiting systems. Instead of integrating separately with dozens of platforms, companies integrate once with Kombo to access data from over 100 systems. We abstract away differences in data models, authentication, and API behavior.

Since going through Y Combinator in 2022, we

Raised $25M+ of funding from Y Combinator, Acadian Ventures, 486 and other investors

Grew from 0→ $10M+ ARR and hundreds of customers (growth-wise among the ~top-5% of VC-backed startups)

Scaled to process data for the equivalent of 10% of Germany's workforce

Grew to a team of 50+ team members (pictures!) in 2x offices

Kombo is an international company by default. We operate across two main hubs (NYC 🇺🇸 and Berlin 🇩🇪) and work with a globally distributed team representing 20+ nationalities.

The Role

As the company’s first Business Development Lead, you will define how GTM outbound works at Kombo for the next several years. You will own the performance, structure, and evolution of Kombo’s BDR team. You will lead a team of 5 BDRs today and scale it to 15+ over the next year, while ensuring outbound pipeline quality and consistency. This is a first of its kind role at Kombo that opened up as the company experiences high growth, and is critical for the company’s continued success over the next years.

What You'll Be Responsible For

This role is for someone who wants a steep career progression, and full ownership of the GTM team. You will work directly with the founders, first employees, and own mission-critical business outcomes, shape strategy, and build the systems and team that turn outbound into a predictable growth engine at scale.

Outbound Pipeline Ownership

Own the global outbound pipeline generated by the Business Development team (all GEOs (U.S., Europe, etc.) and segments (SME to ENT)

Translate revenue and pipeline targets into

Ensure pipeline quality and downstream conversion

Align team incentives with pipeline outcomes

Team Design & Scaling

Own BDR hiring end-to-end

Scale the team from 5 high-performing BDRs to 15+

Design and continuously improve onboarding and ramp plans

Decide when to hire additional headcount vs improving efficiency through coaching, process, or tooling

Define clear expectations and progression paths for BDRs

People Management & Coaching

Lead onboarding and ramp for new hires

Run ongoing performance management with clear expectations and direct feedback

Coach BDRs on

Build a strong performance culture focused on accountability, learning, and improvement

Strategy & Systems

Educate senior leadership on market trends and developments

Translate strategic company-wide direction into excellence in the GTM team and pods

Build and maintain outbound playbooks and messaging frameworks

Design repeatable, scalable outbound systems that reduce dependency on individual performance

How Success Is Measured

Team outbound pipeline attainment

Percentage of BDRs consistently hitting target