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Founding SDR / GTM Intern (m/f/d)

Vanilla Steel12 hours agoInternship
€2,000 - €2,500/moHybridEnglish requiredGerman requiredSalesBusiness Development

Estimated take-home

Monthly net after taxes & social security

€1,490 – €1,785/mo

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Required skills

AttioGermanOutbound SalesCRMCold CallingReactHubSpotClaudePythonClayCursorPipeline ManagementData EnrichmentApolloEnglish

Job description

Vanilla Steel published this listing. We've added our own working-student context below — what this role means for your weekly hours, take-home pay and student visa as a student in Berlin, Germany.

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Description provided by Vanilla Steel

Your mission

We are a Berlin-based startup transforming how industrial materials are bought and sold across Europe. One of the oldest industries in the world still runs on Excel, PDF and email. We are replacing that with AI that runs the buying and selling workflow end to end, increasing liquidity, speeding up transactions and reducing waste for hundreds of steel and metal distributors.

We have strong early traction, real enterprise customers and committed investors. We are a lean, technical team scaling our enterprise pilots and building the AI infrastructure underneath them.

Your job is to open doors and win conversations. You partner closely with Co-founder Simon, who owns sales. You will spend real time on the phone with German steel traders and distributors, and you will build the systems and tools that make every call sharper. This is a hands-on role with four pillars, and the first one is where you will make your mark.

  • Reach out and close

Own our outbound: call and message decision-makers at steel traders and stockholders across the DACH region, in German, every day. Get past the gatekeeper, open the conversation, and book qualified meetings for the team. Track follow-ups so no warm lead ever goes cold, and prepare the pre-call briefs that make each conversation land.

  • Build the pipeline

Build and verify our target lists: the right companies, mapped to the right person (Head of Sales, branch manager, MD). Keep our CRM (Attio) clean and trustworthy so the whole team can rely on it.

  • Extend our AI outbound engine

Improve the internal AI tooling that powers our outreach: research, enrichment and message drafting. Wire in new data sources and automate the manual steps that slow you down. You will use AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude) to ship, not just specify.

  • Help build the brand

Help shape how our software business shows up in the world: our brand, our messaging, and our presence on social media. Bring ideas for how we look and sound, help grow our audience across the channels that matter, and keep everything consistent as the product grows.

Your profile

You are genuinely comfortable picking up the phone, and you like finding smarter ways to work. The one non-negotiable: you can sell in German. Everything else you can grow into here.

  • Excellent written and verbal communication in German (C1 or C2 must have, native not required) and solid English. You can run an outbound call with a German industrial customer end to end, and you are not thrown by a cold conversation.
  • Enrolled student or recent graduate. We care about how you think and what you have built, not your years of experience.
  • Comfortable with software, and keen to use AI tools like Cursor or Claude to work smarter. If you can build or automate things yourself, even better, though you do not need to be an engineer.
  • Resourceful and thick-skinned. You take initiative instead of waiting to be told, and a "no" does not slow you down.
  • Organized, and genuinely bothered by messy data.
  • Nice to have: your own outreach or sales experience; a side project you have shipped; a portfolio, brand, or content you have built (a site, a social account, a newsletter); Python, React, or GTM tools like Clay, Apollo or HubSpot.

Why us?

  • €2,000 to €2,500 per month, depending on experience.
  • Real ownership from day one: you run your own outbound, and you watch the meetings you book turn into real deals.
  • Work directly with the founders and learn how a startup wins its first customers from zero, in a real industry.
  • Senior co-founders who are operators, not pitch-deck founders. Decisions happen fast.
  • Subsidised Urban Sports Club membership and Deutschlandticket.
  • Hybrid work format, office in the heart of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.
  • Regular team events, company breakfasts and Friday drinks.

About Us

We are a Berlin-based startup that has successfully established a leading digital-first trading company for industrial metals across Europe.

The multi-billion-euro metal trading industry is operated on Excel, PDF and Email. Our mission is to integrate smart technology and data to drive every decision, transaction, and workflow in the steel industry. Our technologies & services increase liquidity, accelerate transactions, reduce scrapping rates and enhance trading convenience for hundreds of steel and metal distributors across Europe.

Working student essentials

What this Sales internship in Berlin means for you — pay rules, social contributions, and what international students should check before applying.

Weekly hours

Internships have no 20-hour cap, but a voluntary internship longer than three months generally has to pay at least the German minimum wage. Mandatory internships in your study programme are exempt.

Working student rules

Social contributions

Mandatory internships are largely exempt from social contributions. Voluntary internships are treated like regular employment once they run long enough, so contributions usually apply.

Check your insurance

International students

Non-EU students can work 140 full or 280 half days per year (raised from 120/240 in March 2024). A working student contract usually fits within this — confirm the exact limits printed on your residence permit.

Studying in Germany

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