Senior SDR, Player-Coach

Senior SDR, Player-Coach

Job Title: Senior SDR
Location: Remote (Canada-based preferred)
Employment Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Existing Vacancy: This is a new open role at Cognota.
Reports to: Chief Revenue Officer

About Cognota

Cognota is the LearnOps platform — the operating system Learning & Development teams use for capacity, execution, and intelligence. CLOs and L&D leaders are being asked to do more, with less, faster, every year. We give them the system to do it.

We're a growth-stage SaaS company with a category to build, customers who actually rave about us, and a team that takes the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.

The shortest version

This is, first and foremost, an SDR role. You'll carry a quota. You'll book the meetings. You'll do the work.

The difference: you'll also be the senior voice on the team — the one peers come to for coaching, the one who helps shape the playbook, the one who raises the bar by raising their own.

If you're a STAR SDR looking for your next step up — and you're not ready to step off the field — this is the role.

The Role

This is a primarily-IC role for a seasoned SDR who's ready to stretch into leadership without abandoning the work that made them great.

You'll spend most of your time on outbound — owning your quota, working accounts, and booking meetings into our enterprise pipeline. The rest of your time, you'll be the senior presence on the team: coaching peers, co-building the playbook, partnering with AEs and Marketing, and modeling the standard for what great outbound looks like.

You'll report directly to the CRO and work alongside our Enterprise SDR(s), the AE team, and our Growth marketing lead.

It's the role for the SDR who wants more responsibility, more influence, and a clear path to leadership — without losing their edge or stepping into pure management

What You'll Do

As an individual contributor (~70% of your time)

• Own a personal pipeline-generation quota into our ICP: L&D, HR, and People leaders at mid-market and enterprise companies.
• Run multi-channel outbound — email, LinkedIn, phone, video — with the kind of personalization that actually breaks through to senior buyers.
• Partner closely with Account Executives to land target accounts, multi-thread complex orgs, and build pipeline that converts.
• Live in Salesforce, Gong, FullEnrich, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and the rest of our outbound stack — and have opinions on how to make it sharper.
• Set the standard. When new SDRs join, your work is the reference example.

As a coach and collaborator (~30% of your time)

• Coach peers on their cadences, calls, emails, and account strategy.
• Co-build and iterate on the SDR playbook alongside the CRO and Marketing team — cadences, scripts, ICP definition, qualification, handoff motion.
• Partner with Marketing on campaign rollout, with Sales Ops on data and tooling, and with AEs on pipeline quality.
• Be a force multiplier on the team — sharing what works, surfacing what doesn't, raising the floor for everyone.
• Help interview, onboard, and ramp new SDRs as the team grows.

This is not a people management role today. It's a senior IC role with explicit coaching and team-building responsibilities — and a clear path to formal leadership if and when that's what you want next.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for a seasoned SDR professional — someone who can execute at a high level and partner, collaborate, and coach the people around them.

Must-haves

• 3+ years of SDR experience in B2B SaaS, with a clear track record of consistently hitting and exceeding outbound quota.
• Seasoned executional craft — your outbound is genuinely best-in-class, not just good.
• The instinct to coach without being asked. You see a peer struggling and you sit down with them. You spot a playbook gap and you fix it.
• Strong written communication — your emails should be something you'd be proud to share, not something a manager has to clean up.
• Data fluency — you can read your own funnel, diagnose drop-off, and tell the difference between an activity problem and a messaging problem.
• A genuine appetite to still carry quota . This is the non-negotiable.
• Toronto-based preferred — our HQ is here, and we love having the team in the room together when we can. Strong remote candidates in North America will absolutely be considered.

Strongly preferred

• Experience selling into L&D, HR, or People leaders — or working at a company in the L&D, HR Tech, EdTech, or Talent space. Domain knowledge is a real edge here. Our buyers can sniff out generic outbound in two lines.
• Experience selling into enterprise (5,000+ employee) accounts.
• Some informal leadership in your background — running peer training, owning onboarding for new hires, leading a pod, mentoring SDRs.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, Gong, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, FullEnrich, and modern outbound enrichment tooling.

Bonus

• You've been the first or second SDR at a startup and know what it feels like to build the function, not inherit it.

Why Cognota

A clear next step that doesn't ask you to stop selling. This role is built for the STAR SDR ready to grow without giving up the craft. The work compounds — every quarter you'll have more influence over the playbook, the strategy, and the team. If a formal leadership role is what you want next, you'll be the obvious internal candidate.

A category being built, not defended. "LearnOps" is a category we're naming and shaping. You'll be selling something new — which is harder, but also way more interesting than pitching another version of an established product.

Real product, real love. Our customers — including Fortune 50 companies, global insurers, and lean L&D teams at fast-growing mid-market companies — actually rave about us. You're not selling vaporware or aspirational positioning.

A mission with weight. Helping L&D teams operate better means helping more people learn and grow — at scale, across some of the largest organizations in the world. It's not a fluffy mission statement; it's the actual outcome of the work.

Humans first. We work hard. We also have lives, families, hobbies, and Slack channels full of dog photos and bad puns. The team is direct, kind, and allergic to politics.

What We Offer

• Opportunity to build scalable accounting foundations in a growing SaaS company

• Medical, dental, vision and extended health coverage from day one.
• Unlimited PTO
• “You Days” when the whole company gets the day off to recharge and focus on themselves.
• Paid time off on your birthday to celebrate and enjoy a day just for you.
• Professional development opportunities through access to internal mentors and a huge library of learning and development content.
• A flexible, remote-first way of working
  
   

AI Disclosure ( Ontario ESA Requirement)

Cognota does not use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for this role.
All hiring decisions involve human review.

Hiring Decision Notification Requirement

In accordance with Ontario ESA Regulation 244/76, all candidates who complete at least one interview will be informed whether a hiring decision has been made within 45 days of their final interview.

How to Apply

Please submit your résumé and a brief cover letter to View email address on cognota.

If you see an opportunity for yourself with us, apply now to continue the conversation and learn more.

Cognota believes in equality and celebrates diversity. We ensure that every candidate is treated fairly, without discrimination based on age, ancestry, color, race, citizenship, ethnic origin, birthplace, belief, disability, family or marital status, gender identity, gender expression, public assistance status, criminal record, sex, or sexual orientation.

To foster inclusivity, we're committed to making our recruitment process accessible to all. If accommodations are needed during the hiring process, please inform us. Cognota is here to provide or arrange the necessary support for our applicants

Record Retention Notice

Cognota will retain a copy of this job posting and associated application materials for three years after the posting is no longer publicly available, as required by Ontario ESA Regulation 244/76.