Data Program Manager - Frontier AI Lab

Data Program Manager — Frontier AI Lab

Palo Alto (Hybrid)

Up to $500k plus Equity

Our client is building general-purpose, causal, multimodal AI systems that learn to predict and interact with the world in real time. Think of it as teaching AI to understand physics, motion, and environments the way humans do, then letting you step inside and interact with it. Their latest model holds the highest physics score among the evaluated world models and runs in real time. This isn't incremental. It's a new medium.

The role

• You'll be the connective tissue between research, vendors, and the data flywheel. The models are only as good as the data they learn from, and this role owns the strategy, sourcing, quality, and end-to-end delivery of that pipeline.
• You'll take loose requirements from researchers, turn them into scoped acquisition plans with clear quality bars and timelines, and manage the vendors and human teams that execute against them. You'll embed in research planning, flag data risks weeks before they hit a model run, and drive retrospectives on what data moved which evals at what cost.
• This is a role for someone who thinks in process, holds people and plans accountable, and isn't afraid to say "no" to a researcher — or better yet, "yes, by week six, here's the plan."

What you'll do

• Turn fuzzy data requests into sequenced acquisition plans with quality bars, timelines, and clear parameters
• Manage vendors across data types and verticals — maintain relationships, negotiate commercials. Stand up and own the weekly data-needs review. Force-prioritise when necessary and surface trade-offs to leadership
• Embed in research planning and flag data risks 4–6 weeks ahead of model runs
• Define and track quality and throughput metrics. Redline batches that slip and close the loop
• Drive program retrospectives — what worked, what didn't, and what to repeat
• Manage human data collection teams (contractor experience a big plus)

What you bring

• 5 years in program or product management at a technical company, with at least 2 in an AI/ML or data-intensive context
• You can read ML papers without flinching — you don't need to derive the math, but you understand what the research is proving and what data would support it
• Working knowledge of SQL and basic data analysis
• Real experience negotiating with external vendors and driving costs down
• You run a tight standup, keep clean docs, and finish things
• Track record of driving cross-functional programs at speed in environments where priorities shift weekly

Bonus points

• TPM or program management at a frontier AI lab
• Background in data labelling, human-data collection, or RLHF at scale
• Familiarity with AI evaluation methodology or rubric design
• Prior experience as a first hire at an early-stage company

This is a chance to shape the data strategy at one of the most exciting AI labs in the world — where the models are learning to simulate reality itself, and the data you source directly moves the frontier.