Commercial Associate

About Kernel

Kernel provides enterprise RevOps teams with agentic company data for their CRMs. We’ve raised a $14M Series A from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others to build the AI-native alternative to Dun & Bradstreet’s entity and hierarchy data. RevOps teams at companies like Navan, Gong, Mistral, and AlphaSense use Kernel to build and maintain confidence in their CRM company data, eliminating duplicates and broken hierarchies without inhumane levels of manual review. The result is territories that can be defended, credibility with sales and leadership, and AI initiatives that actually work because the underlying company data is trustworthy. Our data management platform combines entity-level intelligence with mass-action tooling to give RevOps teams the data quality and control needed to plan confidently and deploy AI successfully.

Important

This is a commission-based sales role. Do not apply if you are after a position in Operations or Strategy.

The Role

This is the perfect role for either a sales-minded generalist, or a top-performing SDR/BDR. At Kernel, we have an outbound sales motion that works, and our top performers hit their targets and get promoted fast (within 12 months). The outbound sales team is the basis for how fast Kernel can grow, so this is a high impact and high visibility role. To help scale the team, we’re looking for sales-minded people to come and own a book of pre-tiered accounts. Your primary mission is to generate qualified pipeline by researching, prospecting, and engaging the right companies and stakeholders. You’ll spend most of your time leveraging Kernel’s data-driven insights to develop hyper-targeted outreach, primarily via calls (our main channel), LinkedIn DMs, and other channels. We also encourage Commercial Associates to think outside the box to generate pipeline, such as by attending/organising events or by implementing new outbound methods. You’ll partner closely with Marketing and AEs.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Target & Qualify
  • Identify and research high-fit companies and decision-makers using Kernel’s data
  • Build and maintain a consistently updated target list with clear qualification criteria
• Outbound Prospecting
  • Execute a phone-driven cadence (cold calls + voicemails) to generate meetings
  • Take a strategic view of each account in your list, and multithread to get meetings booked
  • Mix LinkedIn, email, and phone in multi-touch cadences
• Handoff & Collaboration
  • Book qualified meetings for AEs and provide detailed call notes
  • Collaborate with Marketing to refine ICPs and messaging based on feedback
• Metrics & Continuous Learning
  • Iterate on messaging and cadences based on performance
  • Share field feedback to inform product and GTM strategy

What You Bring

• We’re open to applicants who have no traditional sales experience, as long as you know that you want to work in a sales role and have excelled in whatever you have done before
• Proven success as a top performer
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Research-oriented mindset, you like understanding the “why now” behind prospects
• Entrepreneurial and proactive attitude; comfortable owning results
• Hard worker, and willing to go the extra mile
• Competitive, and target-driven

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with tools like Outreach, Gong, or ZoomInfo
• Experience selling B2B SaaS on the phone
• Startup experience or exposure to early-stage GTM motion
• Interest in AI, data, or automation

This role may not be for you if you:

• Prefer slow-paced, highly structured sales environments
• Avoid cold calling or phone-heavy work
• Need rigid scripts instead of conversational selling

This role is definitely not for you if you:

• Prefer remote work (requires 4+ days a week in the London office)
• Don’t enjoy the intensity of early-stage GTM
• Have side hustles or other projects that split focus

What We Offer

We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.

• Salary: Competitive base + uncapped commission + equity. The OTE is £63k. Our commission structure includes a percentage of any closed won deal you sourced, and has accelerators for exceeding target
• Our best performers often exceed their target by +50%, earning them 2x OTE
• 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays
• 2 weeks work-from-anywhere
• Pension plan
• Top-spec equipment and central London office
• Free dinner at the office
• Team events and dinners
• Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI

Interview Process

• Stage 1 – 30-minute intro call with Charlie. You’ll discuss your sales experience and motivations.
• Stage 2 – Short outbound role play and mock prospecting task (≤ 2 hours prep).
• Final Stage – Founders interview with Anders (CEO) and Marcus for culture and values alignment.
• If there is mutual fit, we move to references and offer.