UNIFY RESEARCH LAB
Methodology and data dictionary
How the cohort was built, how each measure works, and what the report cannot prove.Direct answer
How was The Path to AE measured?
Unify Research Lab analyzed career-history records for ~180,000 US people whose first recorded SDR or BDR role began between January 1, 2021, and January 31, 2026. We followed those records through July 1, 2026. During that period, ~40,000 people had a later Account Executive role.
Those people represent ~11,000 distinct first-SDR employers and ~13,000 distinct employers on the AE side. The groups overlap, so they are not additive. The analysis includes employers across industries; it is not a tech-company-only sample.
The promotion-timing clock counts distinct active months in SDR or BDR roles across all employers, not total elapsed calendar time. Career gaps and unrelated roles do not count. Timing medians describe only people observed reaching AE; cohort-conversion charts instead use elapsed months for the full starting cohort.
The analysis is observational. It describes patterns in the records and does not prove that employer size, industry, location, or company growth caused a person to reach AE.
Data dictionary
What do the core measures mean?
| Cohort | People who started their first SDR or BDR role between January 1, 2021, and January 31, 2026. |
|---|---|
| Observation end | July 1, 2026. People who started later had less time to reach AE. |
| Reached AE | A later recorded Account Executive role after the first SDR or BDR start. |
| Active SDR months | Active months in SDR or BDR roles before reaching AE, summed across every company. Career gaps and unrelated roles do not count. |
| Climbed | Promoted to AE at the company where they were already working. |
| Jumped | Changed employers and took the AE title in the same move. |
| Switched, then climbed | Changed employers as an SDR, then earned an internal AE promotion later. |
| Last SDR employer | Where the person worked as an SDR right before becoming an AE. Not necessarily their first SDR job. |
| Employer identity | Employer IDs are used to compare moves. Subsidiaries and company aliases can cause some within-company moves to appear as employer changes. |
| Median | The midpoint: half of those who reached AE did it in less time, half in more. |
| Middle 50% | The range from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile, calculated with exact quantiles. |
Denominators
What does each count represent?
Every chart states its unit. People, roles, moves, and postings are not interchangeable.
| People | Unique people. Used for cohort size and most transition charts. |
|---|---|
| Roles | Recorded job starts. One person can contribute more than one role. |
| Moves or events | Title-to-title changes. One person can contribute more than one event. |
| Postings | US job advertisements. Used only in the separate compensation snapshot. |
| Share of cohort | A category count divided by all ~180,000 people in the fixed cohort. |
| Share of people reaching AE | A path count divided by the ~40,000 people who reached AE. |
Coverage
Which questions do the datasets answer?
| Timing | Active SDR months before AE, monthly transition volume, path length, and cohort survival. |
|---|---|
| Promotion path | Internal promotion versus employer change, by journey, industry, employer size, and company growth. |
| Geography | State and normalized metro-area comparisons, split by smaller and larger employers. |
| Destination | The next recorded role family and the employer-size move made by people who changed companies for AE. |
| Market context | Annual SDR role starts, hiring momentum, promotion events, and advertised US base salary. |
Limits
What should readers keep in mind?
- Career and job records can be incomplete. “No further role” means no later role was observed.
- Recent cohorts have had less time to reach AE, so later survival percentages remain provisional.
- Company employee bands, growth, and industry use the latest available 2026 company record, not a historical snapshot from the time of employment. Companies may have changed size or industry during the study window.
- Employer-ID aliases and subsidiaries can make some within-company moves appear as employer changes, affecting the internal-promotion-versus-employer-change split.
- Location describes the available person record and may not match every earlier role location.
- The salary section uses job postings, not cohort outcomes, and excludes commission, bonus, and equity.
- Month 12 contains a known date artifact because some source records provide only a year.
Editorial policy
How are corrections handled?
Every numerical claim is checked against the corresponding query export. If a material error is confirmed, Unify Research Lab updates the value, the visible “last updated” date, the structured-data modification date, and the revision note on this page.
Send questions or correction requests to hello@unifygtm.com. Include the chart title, the value in question, and any supporting evidence.
This report is original Unify research and includes links to Unify products. It contains no affiliate links or paid rankings.
Revision history
What changed?
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| August 11, 2026 | Clarified survivorship in promotion-timing metrics, the month-12 date artifact, employer-identity limits, differences between clocks and denominators, and pay-snapshot scopes. |
| August 5, 2026 | Refreshed the published datasets, added a stable data dictionary, clarified missing-role treatment, and documented the correction process. |