Founding GTM Lead

About the company

Our client is a venture-backed defense tech startup (about 15 people) building photorealistic 3D training simulators with an AI instructor. Its platform combines 3D computer vision, neural rendering and multimodal AI for highly regulated industries, and is used by the U.S. military and commercial heavy-industry customers. The company name is shared with candidates later in the process.

About the role

The company is bringing outbound in-house and wants one person to own pipeline creation from start to finish: who to target, what to say, getting the message in front of them, and following up until there's a meeting or a clear no. As the first dedicated go-to-market hire, you'll build this function from scratch. This is an individual contributor role.

Buyers are a maintenance group at an Air Force base, a program office, a VP of Maintenance at an equipment manufacturer, or a field service leader at an energy company. There are hundreds of them, not millions, so this is not a volume role. You're measured on pipeline created, not messages sent.

What you'll own

Outbound and follow-up (about 50%)

• Build and keep a tiered target account list across federal units, program offices, commercial asset owners and OEMs
• Map priority accounts: who owns the problem, who feels the pain, who controls budget, what changed recently
• Write and run tailored outreach across LinkedIn, email and phone. You write your own copy, and it reads like a person wrote it
• Work every reply and inbound lead quickly, and book meetings for the business development team
• Own follow-up discipline and build pipeline around conferences and industry events

Messaging and market insight (about 25%)

• Refine ideal customer profiles and messaging from what the market tells you, and bring evidence for changes to the narrative
• Produce one-pagers, short case studies, landing page copy and account-specific leave-behinds from approved content

Signals, tools and reporting (about 25%, more in your first 90 days)

• Build automated signal tracking: contract awards, budget lines, leadership changes, expansions, hiring surges
• Run a lean, modern stack: AI research and drafting tools, enrichment (for example, Clay), sequencing and simple automations
• Report weekly on pipeline created, meetings and tests

What we're looking for

Required

• 3–6 years in outbound-heavy roles: SDR/BDR, growth, demand generation, GTM engineering or product marketing
• At least one role where you built your own lists and wrote your own outreach
• Hands-on with modern outbound tools: you can build enrichment and signal workflows (for example, in Clay) and simple automations, and you understand email deliverability
• Comfortable with spreadsheets, simple analysis, ambiguity and startup pace
• U.S. person (U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident)

Preferred

• Background in heavy industry: aviation, industrial maintenance, MRO, energy, manufacturing or maritime
• Product marketing experience: positioning, messaging frameworks or sales enablement content
• Experience as an early go-to-market hire at a company under 50 people

Compensation and benefits

• $165,000–$185,000 base plus meaningful equity
• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• 401(k) and paid parental leave
• Remote (U.S.), full-time

This role is recruited by Your IT Recruiter on behalf of a confidential client. Equal opportunity employer.