About the Position

Commercial Associate

Location

London, England, United Kingdom

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Growth, Sales & Marketing

Compensation

OTE £63K
Offers Equity
Offers Commission

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy, and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead, or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs, and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses, and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data, and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva, and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $14M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack, and others, and we are growing 5x YoY.

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.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

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

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
🥕 £450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance
✈️ 2 weeks work-from-anywhere
🍼 Generous parental leave policy
💼 Pension plan
💻 Top-spec equipment and central London office
🎉 Team events and dinners
🚀 Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI
🏆 High-autonomy, high-trust environment with a small team shipping at pace

Interview Process

Stage 1 – Video call with the Talent Lead.

Stage 2 – Video call with the Hiring Manager.

Stage 3 – Case study interview (in person) with the team.

Stage 4 – Values interview with the Founders.

If there is mutual fit, we move to references and offer.

Compensation Range

£63K

Commercial Associate

Job description