Research & Product Lead

Research & Product Lead

Company: Confidential — venture-backed technology company
Location: San Francisco, CA (HQ, in person 5 days per week)
Compensation: $150,000 - $250,000 + equity
Employment Type: Full-time

About the Company

The client works with frontier AI labs and enterprise customers on highly specific dataset problems, focusing on video, audio and multimodal data for AI training and evaluation. It is a Y Combinator (W22) company founded in 2022 and backed by investors including Matrix Partners, Swift Ventures and AI Grant.

The Role

The client is hiring a Research & Product Lead: a high-leverage generalist who pairs deep technical fluency with strong relationship skills. You will manage the client's most important customer accounts at the most technically demanding organizations in the world, drive cross-functional execution, and build the systems that let the company scale, operating as a peer to the engineers and researchers you work with. The client is open to a senior track (existing AI-lab relationships or a human-data company background) and a generalist track (1-2 years out of top consulting, banking or an AI-company APM role, with an engineering degree).

What You Will Do

• Build and manage relationships with frontier AI labs and highly technical customers.
• Translate customer needs into product and research priorities.
• Drive execution across research, product, operations and partnerships.
• Find operational bottlenecks and implement scalable systems.
• Lead technical conversations about datasets, model performance, infrastructure and AI workflows.
• Support high-priority strategic initiatives across the company.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or an equivalent technical degree
• A strong understanding of ML and AI workflows, especially data pipelines and model training
• Enough technical depth to hold substantive conversations with frontier-lab engineers and researchers
• Excellent written and verbal communication with senior technical stakeholders
• High curiosity, high EQ, and scrappiness in a fast-moving startup
• Ability to work in person at the San Francisco HQ 5 days a week

Nice to Have

• Existing relationships at AI labs (senior track)
• Experience at a human data company such as Scale, Surge, Mercor, Snorkel or similar (senior track)
• 1-2 years at MBB, top consulting, banking, or as an APM at an AI company, with an engineering degree (generalist track)
• Video, media or content background

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