Founding GTM Lead

About Schemata

At Schemata, we are transforming the $400 B virtual‑training and simulation market by fusing 3D computer vision, neural rendering and large multimodal models inside highly regulated industries. Our platform delivers photorealistic, intelligent 3D experiences, demanding robust spatial reasoning, high‑performance data pipelines and seamless integration between traditional graphics and AI‑driven perception.

About the Role

We are bringing our outbound motion in-house and want one person to own pipeline creation from start to finish: who we target, what we say to them, getting the message in front of them, and following up until there is a meeting or a clear no.

This role combines three jobs that usually sit apart. About half of your time goes to outbound and follow-up. The rest is split between refining our ideal customer profiles and messaging from what the market tells us, and building and running the signals, tools, and reporting that make it work. You will be measured on pipeline created, not on how many messages you send.

Our 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, and each one deserves outreach that shows we understand their job. This is not a volume role.

You will support our commercial push first, working alongside our VP of Business Development (and our commercial Deployment Strategists as that team grows), and you will support our federal Deployment Strategists as well. You book and prepare meetings; our VP of Business Development and Deployment Strategists run discovery and carry deals to close. The person who does this well has a clear path into leading go-to-market as the team expands.

This is an individual contributor role. As our first dedicated go-to-market hire, you will build this function from scratch.

What You'll Own

Outbound and follow-up (about 50%)

• Build and maintain a focused, tiered target account list with our sales team, across federal units and program offices and commercial asset owners and OEMs.

• Map each priority account: which sub-organizations own the problem, who feels the pain, who controls budget, and what has 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: qualify, nurture, disqualify, and book meetings for our Deployment Strategists and VP of Business Development.

• Own follow-up discipline. Prospects who show interest and never book are our biggest leak, and closing it is yours.

• Build pipeline around conferences and industry events: book meetings before we arrive and follow up before the week is over.

ICP, messaging, and narrative (about 25%)

• Run a steady testing loop: form a hypothesis about a segment or message, build the audience, test it, read the results, and recommend the next move.

• Keep our ideal customer profiles and personas current, based on what replies, discovery calls, wins, and losses actually show.

• Turn what you learn into sharper messaging and propose changes to our narrative. Our VP of Business Development owns the final narrative; you bring the evidence.

• Produce outbound-adjacent materials from our approved content: one-pagers, short case studies, landing page copy, and account-specific leave-behinds. Use only claims we can source.

• Keep a working view of competitors and where our positioning wins or struggles.

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

• Build and run the signal tracking that tells us an account is ready: contract awards and budget lines, leadership changes, facility expansions, new equipment, technician hiring surges, and public statements about workforce or readiness problems. Automate it so it runs every week across our priority accounts, federal and commercial.

• Run a lean, modern stack: AI research and drafting tools, contact enrichment (for example, Clay), sequencing, and simple automations where they save real time, starting from the setup we put in place before you arrive. Recommend what to add, keep, or cut. We are not yet looking for mass-outbound infrastructure.

• Keep our CRM in Notion current: every active account and contact has an owner and a logged next step.

• Report weekly on accounts worked, conversations started, meetings booked and held, opportunities created, and pipeline sourced, and say what the numbers mean, including whether a test failed because of the audience or the message.

Your First 90 Days

By day 30. You know our product, customers, current pipeline, and past outbound campaigns. You have taken over our starter outbound setup, audited our tools and CRM, built briefs on your first 20 target accounts, and booked your first meetings.

By day 60. You own a tiered target list for commercial and federal, your outreach is running on signals rather than a calendar, your weekly report is something leadership reads, and you have launched your first test against a hypothesis you defined.

By day 90. You are holding a steady meeting cadence, at least one opportunity in our pipeline started with you, you have read out at least two segment or messaging tests with a clear recommendation, and a documented playbook exists that someone else could run.

What We're Looking For

Required

• Three to six years in outbound-heavy roles such as SDR or BDR, growth, demand generation, GTM engineering, or product marketing, including at least one role where you personally built the lists and wrote the copy.

• A record of running experiments on audiences or messaging and changing course based on the results.

• Excellent, plain-spoken writing. We will evaluate your copy.

• Strong research instincts. You can learn an unfamiliar industry or military organization quickly and find the person who actually owns the problem.

• Fluency with modern outbound and AI tools: you can build your own enrichment and signal workflows (for example, in Clay) and simple automations, and you understand email deliverability.

• Comfort with spreadsheets and simple analysis. Honest about what the numbers say and quick to kill what is not working.

• Comfort with ambiguity and startup pace. You will set your own priorities more often than you receive them.

• U.S. person.

Preferred

• Background in heavy industry like aviation, industrial maintenance, MRO, energy, manufacturing, or maritime.

• Product marketing experience: positioning, messaging frameworks, or sales enablement content.

• Experience with design tools such as Canva for building collateral.

• Experience as an early go-to-market hire, ideally at a company under 50 people, where the process you inherit is the process you build.

How We Measure Success

Specific targets get calibrated with you in the first 30 days.

• Pipeline created and opportunities sourced.

• Qualified meetings booked and held per month.

• Meeting-to-opportunity conversion. We care more about this than about raw meeting count.

• Segment and messaging tests run, and the decisions that came from them.

• Speed of response to replies and inbound interest.

• CRM and signal hygiene: share of active accounts with an owner, a logged next step, and current signals.

How We Work

• Volume is not the goal. Four real conversations beat twelve tire-kickers.

• Do the homework. Every message should prove we understand the recipient's job.

• Test, then scale. We would rather retire a segment in week three than defend it for a quarter.

• Plain language wins. Lead with the outcome, not the technology. No buzzwords.

Why Join Us?

• Meaningful equity stake in a high-growth, venture-backed defense tech startup, so you share in the upside you help create

• Comprehensive health coverage : medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Competitive salary that reflects your experience and track record

• 401(k) plan

• Paid parental leave

• High visibility and real impact: Collaborate with world-class engineers and researchers in a high-ownership environment.