About Scalar:
Building on a great API is one of the best feelings in software — every interface you want is right there, and it all just works. Building on a bad one is the opposite: out-of-date docs, no SDK in your language, no MCP server. We started Scalar to fix that.
We're a small team (around ten engineers and designers) who wear a lot of hats and obsess over our craft. We think every company deserves Stripe-level docs, SDKs, and MCP servers from day zero — not just the ones with a platform team to build them. Open-source is in our DNA: our whole team contributes to and maintains repositories across the API ecosystem, including the standards everyone relies on, like OpenAPI.
We keep things lean and move without layers of process — engineers pick up problems, talk to each other, and ship. We're looking for owners with high agency: people who see what needs doing and do it. If you do your best work with a lot of autonomy and very little ego, you'll feel at home here.
The role
Right now, sales at Scalar is Marc, our CEO, doing every part of it himself. Finding the account, writing the first email, running the call, going deep on the technical evaluation, negotiating the contract, onboarding the team. That's founder-led sales end to end, and it's worked — it's how we got Zoom, Clerk, Warp, and Profound.
It also doesn't scale, which is why we're hiring you.
We're hiring two SDRs to be the front of that motion, joining alongside our first Solutions Engineer at the same time. You'd be one of the first three people on the sales team — not the fifteenth rep on a floor running someone else's sequence.
Scalar has real pull already. Our API docs package alone is downloaded around 25 million times a month, and our team maintains open-source tooling that a large part of the API ecosystem depends on. What we don't have is anyone systematically turning that reach into conversations with the companies who should be paying us.
There is a motion here and it works — but it's Marc's, and it lives largely in his head. You'll sit next to him, learn how he opens these conversations and why they land, and then build the top of the funnel he has never had time to build. What you learn about what lands on this audience goes straight back into how we all sell.
Who we sell to
Zoom's developer documentation runs on Scalar. So does Clerk's. Warp and Profound ship SDKs we generate from their OpenAPI documents, in every language their users ask for.
Those are your prospects: engineering and platform leaders at companies with a real public API. They can smell a template from across the room, and generic outreach doesn't work on them. Outreach that shows you actually opened their API docs does — and that's the unusual advantage in this job. Almost every company worth contacting publishes their API docs, which means the evidence you need is sitting there in public before you write a single word.
You'll be selling a deeply technical product: documentation platforms, generated SDKs across six languages, and MCP servers that let agents do real work against a customer's API. You don't need to code. You do need to understand what those things are well enough that an engineering leader takes you seriously in the first ninety seconds.
What you'll work on
Outbound — building target lists of companies whose public APIs are underserved, and writing outreach specific enough that an engineering leader replies. We'll give you the tooling; you bring the judgment about who's worth a message
Research that earns the reply — opening a prospect's actual API docs and finding the thing worth leading with: the broken example, the endpoint with no code sample, the SDK that doesn't exist in the language their users keep asking for
Inbound — working signups, open-source users, and docs traffic, and figuring out which of them is a company and which is a side project
Qualification — running first calls, understanding what an engineering team is actually trying to fix, and handing over a meeting that Marc and our Solutions Engineer can close
Your own tooling — Apollo, Clay, HubSpot and whatever else earns its place. We'd rather you automate your busywork than grind through it
Learning the category properly — enough OpenAPI, SDK, and MCP fluency to hold a real conversation with an engineer, which we'll teach you and expect you to run at
You might be a fit if
You've done 1–3 years of SDR/BDR work in B2B SaaS, ideally selling something technical — or you've done something else demanding and can show us you'll outwork the field
You write well. Short, specific, human emails, not paragraphs of adjectives
You're technically curious enough to learn what an API, an SDK, and an MCP server are, and to talk about them credibly with engineers. You don't need to code
You'd open a prospect's API documentation before writing to them, and you'd find the detail worth mentioning
Sitting next to the CEO while he sells reads as the best part of this job rather than the most intimidating part
You take rejection as data, not as an event
You operate with a high level of kindness and clear communication
Nice to have
Experience selling developer tools, infrastructure, or anything to an engineering buyer
A technical background of any kind — CS classes, a bootcamp, a side project, or a stint in support or QA at a technical company. Several of the best SDRs selling to engineers started exactly there
Fluency with modern prospecting tooling — Apollo, Clay, HubSpot, or similar — and an instinct for automating your own busywork
You've been an early GTM hire before and know what the first six months actually feel like
You've used API docs in anger and have opinions about which ones are good
Where we work
In-office in San Francisco. Scalar is otherwise a remote team, and our engineering roles are remote — but we're building the sales team in person on purpose. You'll be in a room with Marc, our Solutions Engineer, and the other SDR, every day, in the year where we scale the sales organization.
That's the real offer here. You'll hear how the CEO opens a cold conversation, what makes an engineering leader lean in, and which objection actually ends a deal — live, on the other side of the desk, months before any of it gets written down. Two SDRs and a Solutions Engineer learning out loud in the same room beats three people on Zoom, especially in the first year.
We offer flexible, unlimited time off. We believe prioritizing the team's well-being makes the work better and more meaningful.
Other notes
Two openings. You'd be starting alongside another SDR and our first Solutions Engineer.
This is a build role, not a seat. The people who do it well here should be running a team or carrying a bag within a couple of years, and we'd rather that happen at Scalar.
We are a small team of ten and wear many hats. We expect everyone to pitch in and help out where needed.
Compensation Range: $70,000–$85,000 (USD) base, for an on-target range of $100,000–$120,000 including variable, based on experience — plus equity.