SaaS Recruitment
SDR and BDR
recruitment.
Timberseed recruits first-time and experienced SDRs and BDRs, including multilingual SDRs, for venture-backed SaaS companies in London, New York and across Europe. First-time SDRs, experienced reps who have carried a number before, and language specialists covering DACH, the Nordics, France and Benelux are three different searches, and we run each one differently.
What UK SDRs cost
What should I budget for my first SDR hire?
A company hiring its first SDR needs something different from the published median — published benchmarks skew towards larger, more established employers.
RepVue's UK data, updated 15 September 2026, puts the median SDR base at £39,988 with median OTE of £60,078. Top performers reach £88,386. That median sits above what most Series A companies budget for a first hire, because RepVue's sample skews towards established SaaS employers with mature comp bands. A graduate SDR in London starts lower. An experienced rep with a track record costs more than the median.
The number that should shape your model is attainment. 57.9% of UK SDRs currently hit quota. If your cost per meeting assumes the whole team lands on target, rebuild it.
| Level | Typical London base | Typical OTE |
|---|---|---|
| Graduate SDR | £32,000 – £35,000 | £45,000 – £50,000 |
| Experienced SDR | £35,000 – £45,000 | £55,000 – £70,000 |
| Senior SDR | £45,000 – £60,000 | £65,000 – £96,000 |
Ranges are London-anchored and drawn from published market data, last checked September 2026. Manchester and regional roles run lower. Germany and the Nordics price differently.
Hiring in New York? See our NYC SDR Benchmarking Report.
Should I hire a graduate or an experienced SDR?
It depends on who will coach them. If there's no coaching capacity, pay for experience.
This is the hire most often got wrong, and the mistake is usually sequencing rather than selection. An SDR with no sales leader above them has nobody to review their calls, nobody to fix their messaging, and nobody to tell them when a week has gone badly. Graduates especially need that. If you have a founder who will spend real time coaching, a graduate works well and stays longer than an experienced rep would. If nobody has the time, hire someone who has done the job before and can run without supervision.
What we screen for at graduate level:
- Evidence of hard things done voluntarily
- Whether they will pick up a phone
- How they handle being told they are wrong
- What they did in the week after a rejection
Sports played, jobs held during study, and money earned before graduating tell us more than a degree classification does.
A different screen
What should I screen for in an experienced SDR hire?
We ask three things and they carry most of the weight.
Meetings booked against target, across several quarters
One strong quarter is a good patch or a lucky account. We want the pattern, including the quarters that went badly.
Call volume, and whether they still pick up the phone
Plenty of SDRs have quietly stopped calling and run on sequences alone. That works in some markets. It fails in most outbound motions, and it is not always visible on a CV.
Why they have not moved to AE yet
The single most useful question in an experienced SDR screen. Sometimes there was no seat. Sometimes they were passed over, and the reason they give tells you what you are hiring.
Can you hire German or French-speaking SDRs?
Yes. Roughly one in three of our placements is a language specialist, and we hold 15,000+ German, French, Nordic and Dutch-speaking GTM professionals in our network.
What a language requirement does to your budget is raise the floor rather than the ceiling. A strong senior rep costs what a strong senior rep costs. What disappears is the cheap end. You will not hire a German-speaking SDR in London at the bottom of the English-speaking range.
The real cost is search time. The pool of fluent German speakers with SaaS outbound experience and the right to work in London is a fraction of the English-speaking pool, and every EMEA-expanding scale-up in the city is competing for it. Budget weeks, not a large salary uplift.
When should an SDR be promoted to AE?
SDR to AE usually runs 12 to 18 months. SMB AE base salaries start from £55,000, which is close to what a strong senior SDR already earns. If you hire a good SDR and cannot fund an AE seat by month 15, you are paying senior SDR money to someone whose next logical move sits at a company that has one. Plan the seat before you make the hire.
How we assess SDRs
How do you assess an SDR before putting them forward?
Every SDR we put forward has had a structured screening interview and a live cold-call role-play with us first, not just a CV review. That is alongside three CVs per placement being the standard across the desk, so by the time you see a shortlist, each candidate has already been tested against the job itself.
How we work
How does Timberseed source SDR and BDR candidates?
Three CVs per placement. We hold 30,000 GTM professionals in our network and we do not post and pray. For graduate searches that means we have usually spoken to the shortlist before you brief us. For experienced and language searches it means direct approach, because the people worth hiring are not applying to job adverts. SDR and entry-level hires average 10 days, brief to offer accepted.
“Timberseed has filled our sales organisation with top talent across Europe. Their candidates make up a big chunk of our BDR and SDR teams in EMEA and many have risen up to managerial positions in only a few years. When we get a profile from Timberseed, we know we are getting top graduate talent as well as potential future leaders.”
Sean Hayes
VP, Global Sales Development, Aircall
Further reading
Hiring an SDR or BDR?
Tell us the level, market and coaching setup
We will tell you what the seat should pay and who is available. Back within 24 hours.
Looking for an SDR role rather than hiring one? Our live roles are here.
Key facts
How we measureRoles
Graduate, experienced, and language-specialist SDRs/BDRs
Markets
UK, Europe and the US
Timeline
10 days, brief to offer accepted
Salary
£32k–£60k base depending on level
FAQ
Common questions
Hiring your next SDR or BDR?
Tell us the level, the market and whether there is a sales leader in place. We'll tell you what the seat should pay and who's available.
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