What are the responsibilities and job description for the Research & Product Lead — Sieve position at David Joseph & Company?
Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 days/week)
Compensation: $150,000 – $250,000 base competitive equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available
Experience Level: 1–2 years depending on track
Employment Type: Full-Time
Headcount: 3 open seats
About Sieve
Sieve is the only AI research company focused exclusively on video data infrastructure and video intelligence. Their thesis: video training data quality is one of the largest constraints in frontier AI model development. Video accounts for 80% of internet traffic — and Sieve is building the foundational layer to advance video AI at scale.
This is a hybrid strategic operator, technical product, and customer-facing AI role. This is not pure product management. This is not pure research. This is not pure sales. This is a high-leverage generalist role sitting between technical customer engagement, product strategy, applied research coordination, and internal operational scaling — working directly alongside the founders.
Core ownership includes:
Senior Track — target backgrounds include existing relationships with frontier AI labs, human data ecosystem experience, AI infrastructure relationship ownership, and technical commercial operators. Strong target companies: Scale AI, Surge, Sapien, Mercor, Invisible, Toloka, Snorkel, Defined.ai, Datasaur.
Generalist Track — target backgrounds include 1–2 years post-MBB or top-tier consulting, investment banking, APM at an AI company, or engineering degree with strong technical curiosity.
Requirements
Highest signals: trusted relationships with frontier labs, human data company backgrounds (Scale AI, Surge, Mercor, etc.), strong technical commercial credibility, and product-minded technical operators. Strong alternative: top consulting background with technical degree, AI product exposure, or high-agency technical generalists.
This Role Is NOT For
Compensation: $150,000 – $250,000 base competitive equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available
Experience Level: 1–2 years depending on track
Employment Type: Full-Time
Headcount: 3 open seats
About Sieve
Sieve is the only AI research company focused exclusively on video data infrastructure and video intelligence. Their thesis: video training data quality is one of the largest constraints in frontier AI model development. Video accounts for 80% of internet traffic — and Sieve is building the foundational layer to advance video AI at scale.
- Exabyte-scale video infrastructure with proprietary video understanding systems
- Multiple millions in quarterly revenue
- Team of approximately 15
- Series A backed by Matrix Partners, Swift Ventures, Y Combinator, and AI Grant
- Partners with frontier AI labs and Fortune 100 enterprise customers
This is a hybrid strategic operator, technical product, and customer-facing AI role. This is not pure product management. This is not pure research. This is not pure sales. This is a high-leverage generalist role sitting between technical customer engagement, product strategy, applied research coordination, and internal operational scaling — working directly alongside the founders.
Core ownership includes:
- Managing relationships with frontier AI labs
- Owning strategic technical customer engagement and translating requirements into product priorities
- AI workflow, data pipeline, model performance, and dataset composition strategy discussions with technical stakeholders
- Cross-functional execution across product, research, partnerships, and operations
- Internal systems and process design
- Operational scaling initiatives and company-wide special projects
Senior Track — target backgrounds include existing relationships with frontier AI labs, human data ecosystem experience, AI infrastructure relationship ownership, and technical commercial operators. Strong target companies: Scale AI, Surge, Sapien, Mercor, Invisible, Toloka, Snorkel, Defined.ai, Datasaur.
Generalist Track — target backgrounds include 1–2 years post-MBB or top-tier consulting, investment banking, APM at an AI company, or engineering degree with strong technical curiosity.
Requirements
- Bachelor's in CS or equivalent technical degree
- Strong ML/AI workflow understanding — data pipelines, model training, model quality tradeoffs
- Technical credibility with researchers, engineers, and senior technical stakeholders
- Strong written and verbal communication; ability to translate between technical and business audiences
- High curiosity, high EQ, scrappiness, and fast learning ability
- Comfort with ambiguity and startup adaptability
- Willingness to work onsite in San Francisco 5 days per week
- Frontier AI lab relationships
- Human data company background
- Product or technical operations experience
- Customer-facing technical role experience
- Startup early-hire experience
- Video, media, or content technology familiarity
Highest signals: trusted relationships with frontier labs, human data company backgrounds (Scale AI, Surge, Mercor, etc.), strong technical commercial credibility, and product-minded technical operators. Strong alternative: top consulting background with technical degree, AI product exposure, or high-agency technical generalists.
This Role Is NOT For
- Pure account management or CSM profiles with weak technical depth
- Pure technical operators with no relationship or commercial instinct
- Traditional enterprise SaaS sales profiles without ML context
- Candidates unable to hold peer-level conversations with researchers
- Competitive compensation and equity
- Health insurance
- Free lunch and dinner
- Application review
- Initial screen
- 2nd round
- CEO intro chat
- Onsite
- Offer
- Role is fully onsite in San Francisco — 5 days/week — please only apply if you can commit to this
- No visa sponsorship available
Salary : $150,000 - $250,000