Sales Development Strategy and Operations Manager

The Sales xDR Operations Team at Okta seeks a Sales Development Strategy and Operations Manager to drive operational excellence for the EMEA xDR organization.

As the Manager, xDR Sales Strategy & Operations for EMEA, you will be the operational backbone of the EMEA xDR team, partnering with EMEA xDR Leadership to ensure the organization has the structures, insights, and processes it needs to hit its 'Stage 2 Opportunity' and Pipeline Generation quotas.

Business Partnership:

• Act as a trusted advisor to EMEA xDR Leadership & Managers, providing strategic guidance and operational support.
• Establish and maintain the operational rhythm of the AMER/EMEA xDR business, including weekly pipeline reviews, monthly performance check-ins, and quarterly business reviews.
• Support the implementation of broader GTM initiatives and pilot programs.
• Work closely with AMER and APJ xDR Operations counterparts to ensure global alignment and process consistency.
• Deliver regular, deeply analytical insights on EMEA xDR performance to stakeholders across xDR, Sales, and Marketing, and GTM, fostering a data-driven decision-making approach.

Lead Management & Pipeline Quality

• Own the regional lead management process, including SLA monitoring, lead routing governance, and feedback loops to Marketing Operations on lead quality and scoring.
• Conduct regular pipeline quality reviews to ensure stage progression hygiene, accurate close dates, and conversion rates that reflect ground truth.
• Track and analyze Stage 2 Opportunity creation trends, identifying early signals of pipeline risk and surfacing recommendations to xDR Leadership.

Forecasting & Planning

• Own regional pipeline creation forecasting, providing weekly and monthly projections to xDR and Sales Leadership to support broader revenue forecasting processes.
• Develop and refine forecasting models that account for rep ramp curves, seasonality, and segment-specific pipeline dynamics.
• Act as the regional operational lead for annual planning rollouts, ensuring that territories, system transitions, and reporting dashboards are updated to reflect the new go-to-market strategy.

Requirements:

• 4+ years of experience in Sales Operations, Sales Development Operations, or a comparable GTM or Marketing Operations role.
• Deep Salesforce expertise, including reports, dashboards, and a strong understanding of Lead, Contact, Opportunity, and Account object relationships and CRM best practice.
• Familiarity with the broader xDR tech stack (Salesforce, Outreach, 6sense, Gong, Clari, AI/automation tools, etc.).
• Experience executing annual planning cycles operationally, partnering with Strategy teams and regional leadership to translate macro models into rep-level territories and quota assignments.
• Solid understanding of Lead management KPIs and best practices for both inbound (BDR) and outbound (SDR) pipeline generation.
• Proficiency in capacity modeling, headcount planning, coverage forecasting, and quota-setting.
• Proficiency with Sales Development technology tools such as Outreach.io and similar platforms.
• A working knowledge of AI tools and how to apply them in an operations context.