Kombo builds a unified API for HR, payroll and recruiting systems. We're working with companies of all sizes - from Fortune 500 companies down to early stage startups - to help them integrate dozens of software vendors within a few days instead of months.

Instead of having to get their hands on a sandbox environment, build the integration code and figure out the edge cases dozens of times, they can only once use a well documented and clean abstraction provided by Kombo.

We grew from 0 revenue to >$1M ARR within a year and are looking for skilled engineers to help us improve and scale our product. For more details (and pictures!), check out our culture page!

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

• Pipeline per BDR over time

• Pipeline quality and conversion rates

• Time-to-ramp for new hires

• Quality and retention of hires

Who We're Looking For

• Relevant US experience leading and scaling outbound or BDR teams in B2B SaaS, coaching and developing high performers

• Experience doing the job of the BDR. We believe the best leaders sat in the seat themselves, and credibility with the team comes from having done the work.

• Strong systems thinker who can reverse-engineer pipeline targets into execution plans

• Talent Magnet – attract top-performers, and build a Tier 1 GTM team by maintaining a high bar for quality in hiring and execution

• Clear, direct communicator who aligns teams and leadership

• Comfortable owning outcomes in an environment with high expectations and autonomy

Why Join Kombo

1. An international, ambitious, and kind team

2. A career-defining leadership opportunity at the scaling stage

3. A culture of continuous personal growth and learning

4. An environment designed for great work

Talk To Us

If being Kombo’s 1st BD lead — building and scaling a top-performing team – excites you (last quarter’s average attainment was 114%), plus you’re looking for high ownership & growth, please reach out to Madalina even if you don't check every box. We’d love to meet you. 😊

Kombo provides an API layer between our customers and any HR, payroll or recruiting tool - many of which are legacy, enterprise and badly documented systems containing multiple 100k records. The backend is doing a full read of each tool every few hours and has to handle inconsistent data schemas or downtime.

Our tech-stack includes

• Infra: GCP (Cloud run, Kubernetes, BigQuery, Postgres Cloud SQL)
• App
  • Node (TypeScript) + express, zod, tRPC, prisma
  • React (TypeScript)
• Observability: Opentelemetry + Honeycomb
• Other
  • GitHub + GH Actions
  • Terraform