Data Collection Partnerships Lead

About Us

Sieve builds training data that helps AI understand and interact with the world. We work with leading AI labs across video, audio, images, text, and 3D, combining large-scale data infrastructure with multimodal research to improve the data behind frontier models.

Why Now

Robotics and physical AI need data from people performing real tasks in real environments. Collecting that data at scale requires partners with useful access, capable local teams, and reliable operations.

We’re expanding our global network of collection partners. We need someone who can find strong partners, get pilots running quickly, and turn early results into dependable production.

About the Role

You’ll build and scale Sieve’s network of external data collection vendors, owning both new vendor development and ongoing vendor management. You’ll source and qualify collection companies and local operations teams, negotiate agreements, launch pilots, and manage those relationships through accepted data collection hours and sustained production across countries, environments, and data types.

Our partners bring their own access and collection operations. You’ll own those relationships and their commercial and operational performance, working with our hardware, engineering, quality, and delivery teams to ensure the data meets Sieve’s requirements.

Strong fits have personally developed external suppliers or operated distributed production networks. You should enjoy both the commercial work of building a partnership and the detailed follow-through that makes it productive.

What You’ll Do

- Build the vendor pipeline: Own sourcing and qualification of collection vendors across countries, environments, and data types. Assess their access, staffing, equipment, economics, and demonstrated collection capabilities.
- Qualify through real output: Run structured sample reviews and pilots with our technical teams. Establish what a partner can reliably produce before committing to a larger program.
- Own commercial negotiations: Negotiate pricing, payment schedules, volume ramps, and performance commitments. Work with legal and finance to establish clear agreements covering data rights and each party’s responsibilities.
- Turn pilots into production: Translate collection requirements into concrete partner plans, milestones, and onboarding steps. Coordinate internal support so promising partners move into production quickly.
- Own ongoing vendor management: Manage the relationship beyond onboarding and pilots. Run regular reviews of accepted data collection hours, quality, cost, coverage, and delivery reliability. Expand successful vendors and address underperformance directly.
- Resolve operational blockers: Work with partners and internal teams to fix collection, upload, equipment, and quality issues. Set corrective actions, assign owners, and follow through until problems are resolved.
- Build a repeatable operating system: Maintain clear records of agreements, specifications, pilot results, production capacity, and risks. Create playbooks for pricing & region targets, qualifying partners more quickly, and more.

What Success Looks Like

- Promising partners move efficiently from first conversation to successful pilots and sustained production.
- Accepted, usable data grows with predictable quality, cost, and delivery timelines.
- Capacity forecasts reflect demonstrated performance and credible ramp plans.
- Partner issues are resolved without constant intervention from founders or technical leads.
- The network expands across useful tasks, environments, and geographies.

Requirements

- 5+ years of relevant experience in supplier development, vendor operations, data operations, outsourcing, or a related role with direct responsibility for external partner delivery.
- A track record of personally sourcing, negotiating with, onboarding, and scaling suppliers or operational partners.
- Experience managing partner performance against quality, volume, timeline, and cost commitments—including resolving missed targets and difficult commercial conversations.
- Strong commercial and analytical judgment. You can evaluate pricing, model unit economics, build capacity forecasts, and identify the constraint behind a missed target.
- Technical fluency and curiosity. You can learn collection requirements, turn them into clear partner instructions, and work effectively with engineering and quality teams.
- Disciplined organization, clear communication, and consistent follow-through across multiple partners, countries, and time zones.
- Willingness to travel to partner operations when needed. Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate.

Nice to Have

- Experience buying or managing data collection, annotation, or other human-in-the-loop services.
- Familiarity with robotics, egocentric video, wearable capture systems, or AI training data.
- Experience building supplier networks across multiple countries.
- Experience hiring or leading a small operations team.
- SQL, scripting, or automation skills that help improve reporting and operational workflows.

Benefits

- Health insurance and a 401(k).
- Company-provided breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
- Covered Uber rides home.

This role is based at our San Francisco office, five days per week, with travel to partner operations as needed.