Director, AI Data Operations

Job Description:

Responsibilities

• Lead, inspire, and scale a 50+ person team — establishing clear accountability, operational discipline, and a high-ownership culture
• Drive operations against defined quality benchmarks and efficiency targets (e.g. QC accuracy, delivery turnaround time, on-time delivery, throughput, and cost efficiency)
• Drive image sourcing strategy — keeping abreast of industry trends, finding new vendors, managing commercial relationships, and managing image acquisition
• Drive an AI-first transformation of the function — pilot and embed AI agents / LLMs, and modern tooling that fundamentally shifts how the work gets done
• Build and implement repeatable processes, playbooks, and staffing strategies to ensure the organization runs efficiently in an AI-first manner
• Develop and retain top operational talent
• Collaborate & partner globally with with India and US based R&D teams— data science, platform engineering, product management — and with Customer Success teams to align operations with model training needs and customer commitments

Qualification & Experience 

• A senior operations leader (12+ years, 5+ managing 50+ headcount) who has built and run quality-critical operations at scale, preferably with experience of annotation/ML data ops
• Manager-of-managers credentials, with credibility across technical, product, and senior leadership
• Passionate about driving operational excellence and using AI to reshape work; hands-on experience leading AI-led transformations, even if smaller-scale or in progress. We care about your conviction, AI fluency, and pattern recognition. This is a core requirement for the role
• A track record of building high-ownership cultures in operational functions
• A high-quality bar and strong operating discipline — metrics, SLAs, and rhythms are how you run
• Good to have
• Background in GIS, remote sensing, satellite imagery, or geospatial data
• Experience with annotation operations or imagery and data vendor procurement