Business Development Representative (BDR) Manager in Toronto

Toronto, ON / Hybrid (3–4 days/week in the CYGNVS Toronto office)

Reports to: CMO

About CYGNVS

CYGNVS is the out-of-band command center for cyber and AI incident response, trusted by more than 3,000 organizations across 71 countries. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz and other top investors, we’re a fast-growing startup defining a new market at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI and crisis response — and building our team from the ground up to do it. It’s a rare opportunity to join early, make a real impact, and grow your career as we scale.

The Opportunity

We’re building our inaugural Business Development Representative (BDR) team — four BDRs and this Manager role. This is a founding-team opportunity: you won’t be inheriting an existing playbook, you’ll be building it. You’ll help hire the initial team, then lead, coach, and scale it into a high-performing engine that reliably converts marketing and sales-sourced interest into qualified pipeline. This role sits at the intersection of Marketing and Sales. You’ll be accountable for pipeline generated from every channel the BDR team touches — inbound web leads, events, direct mail, and sales-partnered outbound — and you’ll need to understand and drive results across both marketing and prospecting-sourced pipeline equally well.

What You’ll Do

• Hire, onboard, and build the inaugural BDR team of four, setting the tone and standards for the function from day one.
• Own the team’s monthly qualified meeting and pipeline targets, and report results, trends, and forecasts to Marketing and Sales leadership.
• Coach daily: run regular 1:1s, call/email reviews, and live coaching to help each MDR overcome obstacles and improve their craft.
• Be genuinely hands-on — willing to roll up your sleeves alongside the team, jump on calls, and work deals when it helps the team hit its numbers.
• Drive rigorous event performance management: set targets for meetings/contacts generated per event, track ROI by event, and continuously improve pre-event recruiting, on-site execution, and post-event follow-up.
• Partner closely with Marketing on lead flow, scoring, and follow-up SLAs for inbound and direct mail programs, and with Sales on outbound prospecting alignment within our ICP.
• Build and refine the team’s playbook — call scripts, sequences, qualification criteria, and handoff process to Sales — and keep it evolving as you learn what works.
• Own reporting and CRM/sales engagement tool hygiene across the team, ensuring accurate, timely data on lead status and activity.
• Create a culture of accountability and growth — one where the team is metrics-driven and lives by the results, but also feels genuinely supported, coached, and set up to succeed.

What We’re Looking For

• 2–4 years managing an SDR, BDR, or MDR team, ideally in enterprise B2B SaaS.
• A track record of building or scaling a team to consistently hit pipeline and meeting targets.
• Metrics-driven: you know your numbers cold and use them to diagnose what’s working and what’s not, including event-level ROI.
• A clear understanding of how to drive and balance pipeline from both marketing-sourced and prospecting-sourced channels.
• Hands-on experience with Outreach or a similar sales engagement/sequencing tool, and a solid grasp of fundamental BDR/SDR/MDR metrics and operating principles (activity-to-meeting ratios, sequence cadences, conversion rates by stage, and how to diagnose where a rep or the team is falling short).
• A natural coach — someone who wants to be in the trenches with the team daily, helping them work through obstacles rather than managing from a distance.
• Leads with empathy: builds a positive, supportive culture where the team feels safe to learn, make mistakes, and grow — and where that culture becomes a retention advantage, not just a nice-to-have.
• A creative, go-getter mindset with a strong bias for action — comfortable building a function without an existing playbook.
• Willingness to travel to and work industry events as needed.
• Based in or willing to work from Toronto, with the ability to be in-office 3–4 days per week.

Nice to Have

• Experience selling or managing a team selling into the security/cybersecurity space.
• Hands-on experience with HubSpot and Outreach.

Why Join Now

You’ll be the founding leader of the CYGNVS BDR function — hiring the team, building the playbook, and setting the culture from scratch, with direct visibility to Sales and Marketing leadership and real influence over how this function is built and scaled. We’re looking for someone who is eager to grow, contribute, and make a real difference in this niche space. If you’re excited about this opportunity – we’ll be eager to talk to you!