How to Find Companies Hiring Their First SDR (Free Method + Live List)

By the RoleDawn team · Published 2026-10-06 · Updated 2026-10-06

To find companies hiring their first SDR, look for companies posting an SDR or BDR role on their own careers page when they have never posted one before. You can check career pages by hand (free, slow) or use a hiring-signals tool such as RoleDawn, which lists these companies daily at roledawn.com/first-hire/sdr.

Right now RoleDawn's public list shows 45 companies that started posting SDR / BDR roles in the last 30 days, including SnapLogic, Ampeco and Apaleo. The rest of this guide shows how to find them yourself, how to judge whether a role is really a first, and what to say when you reach out.

Why does a first SDR hire matter to sellers?

A first SDR usually marks the moment a company moves from founder-led or inbound-only selling to a repeatable outbound motion. That new team needs things it did not need before: prospect data, a sequencing or sales-engagement tool, a dialer, call coaching, onboarding material and, soon after, someone to own the CRM and reporting (RevOps). If you sell any of those, the weeks around a first SDR hire are when the decisions get made.

It is a reason to reach out, not a guarantee: a posting shows investment in outbound right now, not a signed budget.

Method 1: How do I search job boards for first SDR roles by hand?

Most startups and scale-ups publish jobs on an applicant tracking system (ATS) such as Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby. Those boards are public, so a search engine can find them:

• site:boards.greenhouse.io "Sales Development Representative" (newer boards also live on job-boards.greenhouse.io)
• site:jobs.lever.co "SDR" OR "BDR"
• site:jobs.ashbyhq.com "Business Development Representative"
• Add "founding", "first" or "build our outbound" to narrow it to new teams.

Then judge each result:

1. Open the company's whole board. If there are no other SDR or BDR roles — open or recently closed — this is likely the first.
2. Read the posting. "Founding SDR", "our first sales development hire" or "help us build the outbound playbook" are strong clues.
3. Check the reporting line. An SDR reporting to a founder, CEO or a newly hired Head of Sales usually means a new function.
4. Check the date. Job boards' "posted X days ago" can be misleading; look for the original publish date on the company's own board.

This works and costs nothing, but it is slow. In our own test on 2026-10-06, roughly 4–5 hours of this kind of searching (32 searches and 66 career boards checked one by one) turned up 12 companies that had started hiring SDR, RevOps or security roles in the last 30 days.

Method 2: Should I combine job posts with funding data?

Yes, if you have access to it. Funding databases and news (Crunchbase, PitchBook, press releases, TechCrunch funding coverage) tell you who just raised; many B2B companies hire their first SDRs within months of a seed or Series A round. Take a list of recently funded companies in your ICP and check each careers page for a first SDR or BDR role. Funding plus a first-SDR posting is a stronger timing signal than either alone. The trade-off is effort: you are now maintaining two lists.

Method 3: How can I get companies hiring their first SDR delivered daily?

A hiring-signals tool does the checking for you. RoleDawn reads 4,497 company career pages on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, SmartRecruiters, Recruitee and Workday every day, sorts every title into one of 43 role families, and flags when a company posts in the SDR / BDR family for the first time we have seen.

1. Browse the free list at roledawn.com/first-hire/sdr — no signup.
2. To get them every morning, start a free trial and create a monitor for "SDR / BDR" (optionally filtered by region, keywords or your own account list).
3. Add a Slack webhook or keep the email digest. New matches arrive at 13:00 UTC, each linked to the job post.

What should I say when I reach out?

Open with the job post, not your product. The responsibilities section usually says what the new team has to set up. Three openers that stay true to what you actually know:

1. "Saw you're hiring your first SDR. Teams at that stage usually have to decide on data and sequencing before the rep starts — is that already sorted?"
2. "Your SDR posting mentions building the outbound playbook from scratch. We help first SDR teams with [X]; worth a 15-minute look before your hire starts?"
3. "Noticed the new BDR role reporting to [founder]. When founders hand outbound to a first rep, [problem] tends to come up in month one. Happy to share what we see work."

What not to say: "Congrats on the new team." They may have had one before; all you know is that the posting is new.

Which signals make a first-SDR company a better fit?

• Who the role reports to: a founder or first sales leader means the playbook is still being written.
• Tools named in the post: "experience with Salesforce, Outreach or Apollo" tells you what is already bought — and what is not.
• Other new teams at the same company: a first SDR plus a first RevOps or first account executive role means the whole go-to-market function is being built.
• Size and stage: compare headcount and funding stage with your own best customers.

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Related: Best hiring signal tools · How RoleDawn detects new teams · Companies starting a RevOps team