---
title: 'Sales Development Representative (Remote, US) at Newsela'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-remote-us-newsela-united-states-a0zbrggnkpfg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Sales Development Representative (Remote, US) at Newsela

- **Company:** Newsela
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $80k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/newsela/jobs/8148676

## Job description

Why You'll Love This Role:

Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) generate qualified pipeline by engaging leaders and partnering with some of the largest school districts in the country. They are energized by research and account planning, using a deep understanding of the K-12 landscape to personalize outreach, navigate complex district structures, and lead thoughtful, meaningful cold calls that uncover real district priorities. SDRs collaborate closely with Account Executives, communicate proactively, and take ownership of every opportunity from first touch through handoff. The ideal SDR is intrinsically motivated, highly organized, intellectually curious, and thrives in a collaborative environment where preparation, continuous learning, and purposeful outreach drive results.

This is a fully remote role and an exciting opportunity to have an impact on student outcomes!

What You'll Be Doing:

- Drive high-volume outbound prospecting through strategic email cadences and targeted daily phone outreach to key school decision-makers, including administrators and instructional coaches.
- Uncover and qualify district needs through consultative conversations, transitioning high-potential leads into qualified opportunities for the Strategic Sales team.
- Partner with a dedicated Account Executive (AE) to align on territory strategy, coordinate outreach, and book introductory meetings.
- Collaborate within the Sales organization to inform strategy and processes that enhance overall sales performance.
- Contribute to a highly supportive team environment, backed by robust sales training, enablement, marketing, and operations.
- As the initial point of contact with prospects, represent the future of education by empowering districts to supplement their curriculum with differentiated instruction.
- Review calls with the SDR team, share best practices, and iterate on outreach strategies, including crafting customized talk tracks and hyper personalized email outreach.
- Utilizes data insights and maintains meticulous CRM data hygiene to track cadences, prioritize active leads, and ensure efficient pipeline management.

About You:

- 3+ years in K-12 education (as a teacher, administrator, leader, or similar role) OR 1+ year of inside sales experience (K-12 EdTech inside sales experience highly preferred), with a proven track record of engaging prospects to secure qualified meetings.
- Ability to be a strategic thought partner to Account Executives (AEs), continuously researching and staying up-to-date on your region as a territory expert, tracking account activity, and managing hundreds of school accounts across designated states.
- Demonstrate intellectual curiosity and adaptability by actively seeking feedback, mastering Newsela’s full product suite, and refining your approach daily.
- Demonstrate a high intrinsic drive, excellent time management and organization, and a proactive approach to managing your daily responsibilities.
- Familiar with sales platforms such as Salesforce, Salesloft, and/or Outreach.io.
- A strong communicator who can empathize with the unique challenges of our K-12 buyers, translating those insights into compelling value propositions.
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment and uses creativity when partnering with team members to ensure flawless execution.
- Experiencing using AI tools to drive greater efficiency and productivity.
- Legally authorized to work in the US.

All offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check as part of our pre-employment process.

This position is classified as salaried non-exempt and is eligible for overtime in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.

Why You’ll Love Working At Newsela:

- Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts. Additional benefits such as gym reimbursement, pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, Rocket Lawyer and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul.
- Work From Home: We are a fully remote company. We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
- Supporting ALL Families: Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more!
- Financial Wellbeing: Invest in your future with our 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
- Time Off: Flexible PTO, paid sick time off, company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
- Professional Development: Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
- Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

About Newsela:

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

Compensation Breakdown:

- Base compensation: $55,000
- On-Target Commission (OTC): $25,000
- On-Target Earnings (OTE): $80,000

Final compensation will be determined based on the candidate’s individual skills, qualifications, and experience. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options and benefits. This role will also will also be eligible for variable compensation.

On-Target Earnings (OTE) Range $80,000—$80,000 USD

## About Newsela

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Newsela is an education technology company that provides a content and assessment platform with differentiated, standards-aligned instructional resources for K-12 schools.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D funding)
- **Headquarters**: New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2013
- **Founders**: Matthew Gross and Dan Cogan-Drew

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Education technology (E-Learning Providers)
- **Target customers**: B2B (U.S. K-12 school districts); teachers and administrators are primary users; also serves individual teachers (freemium model).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Meaningful classroom learning for every student."

## Products & Services
- **[Newsela ELA](https://newsela.com/)**: Differentiated fiction and nonfiction texts, novel studies, and curriculum complements to support knowledge-rich literacy instruction. (SaaS)
- **[Newsela Social Studies](https://newsela.com/)**: Primary sources, biographies, current events, and interactive multimedia to support critical thinking and diverse perspectives. (SaaS)
- **[Newsela Science](https://newsela.com/)**: Engaging videos, standards-aligned texts, lessons, and activities to support real-world science connections. (SaaS)
- **[Formative by Newsela](https://newsela.com/)**: A real-time instruction and assessment platform that unifies district assessments and delivers standards-aligned insights for administrators and teachers. (SaaS, acquired in 2023)
- **[Newsela Writing / Luna AI](https://newsela.com/)**: AI-powered, rubric-aligned writing feedback delivered in real time to support writing practice across the curriculum. (AI tool)
- **Schoolytics** (acquired): Student data unification platform providing role-based dashboards and actionable insights. (SaaS)
- **Generation Genius** (acquired February 2025): Science and math video content for K-8.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company). Total funding of $172.2M as of 2021.
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of $50M (source: LinkedIn company data). Over 25 million users (students and teachers) and used in ~90% of U.S. K-12 schools.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: TCV (lead Series C & D), Franklin Templeton (lead Series D), Kleiner Perkins (lead Series B), Owl Ventures (lead Series A), NewSchools Venture Fund & Kapor Capital (Seed).
- **Growth Signals**: 12.6% year-over-year headcount growth (to 386 employees); continuous product expansion via acquisitions (Formative, Schoolytics, Generation Genius); launch of Luna AI; 2025 CODiE Awards (Winner for Newsela Writing, Finalist for ELA and Social Studies).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Differentiated content at scale**: Library of 18,000+ texts and videos from 175+ content providers, available at five reading levels – enabling personalized learning without compromising standards alignment.
- **Entrenched in U.S. schools**: 90% of K-12 schools use Newsela, creating a strong network effect and switching costs.
- **Comprehensive product suite**: Covers ELA, social studies, science, formative assessment, and data analytics under one roof, reducing tool fragmentation for districts.
- **AI-powered tools**: Luna AI provides real-time writing feedback, saving teachers time while differentiating instruction.
- **Research-backed efficacy**: ESSA Tier II studies show product accelerates learning in ELA and social studies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expansion of AI capabilities**: Deeper integration of Luna AI across the product portfolio to automate lesson planning, activity design, and text differentiation.
- **Product integration**: Unifying acquired companies (Formative, Schoolytics, Generation Genius) into a seamless platform for districts.
- **Market penetration**: Growing international presence (currently operating in 13 countries) and deepening relationships with large school districts.
- **Supplemental curriculum leadership**: Positioning Newsela as the go-to source for engaging, standards-aligned supplemental materials across core subjects.

## Why Work Here
- **Fully remote**: Newsela is a fully remote team across the United States with some roles in Latin America.
- **Culture and mission**: Emphasis on work that makes a tangible impact on K-12 education – "inspire a generation of learners, support and empower teachers."
- **Benefits**: Unlimited time off, generous family leave (maternity, paternity, adoption), wellness resources (mind & body discounts, access to world-class medical experts including pet coverage), and learning stipends.
- **Engineering/Product culture**: Open roles for data engineers, analytics engineers, site reliability engineers, and product managers. The company values creative, passionate employees "with quick minds and warm hearts."
- **Growth opportunities**: 30 active job postings across sales, customer success, product, and technology; 12.6% annual headcount growth indicates a scaling organization.

## Sources
1. [newsela.com/careers](https://newsela.com/careers)
2. [newsela.com/company](https://newsela.com/company)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/newsela](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/newsela)
4. [linkedin.com/company/newsela](https://www.linkedin.com/company/newsela)
5. [newsela.com](https://newsela.com/)

## Other roles at Newsela

- [Contractor: IT Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/contractor-it-operations-specialist-newsela-argentina-brazil-chile-costa-rica-xen2zdkspxqt) — Argentina / Brazil / Chile / Costa Rica
- [Contractor: Senior Quality Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/contractor-senior-quality-engineer-newsela-argentina-brazil-chile-costa-rica-abg2eh7n8a4z) — Argentina / Brazil / Chile / Costa Rica
- [Sales Representative, SMB (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-representative-smb-remote-us-newsela-united-states-2hkmbrj2zpe5) — United States
- [Account Executive, East (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-east-remote-us-newsela-united-states-s9npgq1skrpx) — United States
- [Contractor: Lead Analytics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/contractor-lead-analytics-engineer-newsela-argentina-brazil-chile-costa-rica-h4vdtgs5z95v) — Argentina / Brazil / Chile / Costa Rica
- [School Sales Representative (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/school-sales-representative-remote-us-newsela-united-states-07a0vv11045t) — United States
- [Learning Experience Designer, ELA Multilingual Learning (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/learning-experience-designer-ela-multilingual-learning-remote-us-newsela-united-rtn912f86cyw) — United States
- [Contractor: PHP Website Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/contractor-php-website-developer-newsela-latin-america-8gf3qqhw2ed0) — Latin America
- [Director, Scaled Customer Success (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/director-scaled-customer-success-remote-us-newsela-united-states-y73aff09d7a0) — United States
- [Account Executive, West (Remote, US)](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-west-remote-us-newsela-united-states-48vrk72g0q7y) — United States