Strategic Projects Lead

Job Description

Job Description

San Francisco, CA · On-site · Full-time Compensation: $75,000–$100,000 base (OTE $150,000–$200,000) + equity

About the Company

Our client is a seed-stage startup building the data infrastructure and reinforcement learning environments that leading AI labs use to train and evaluate their models. Backed by top-tier investors and led by a founding team with deep experience across large-scale data and consumer-tech platforms, they are building a lean, high-ownership team tackling one of the key bottlenecks in frontier model improvement. Founded 2025 · 1–10 people · Industry: AI Tools / data infrastructure

The Role

This is a hands-on execution role — not strategy or advisory — sitting across engineering, operations, and go-to-market. You'll ramp quickly, own key data pipelines and the end-to-end delivery of reinforcement learning environments for strategic customers, and build operational processes from scratch while reporting progress directly to the founders.

What you'll be doing

• Own end-to-end delivery of RL environments for strategic customers and projects
• Own key data pipelines end-to-end after a short ramp
• Lead cross-functional projects across engineering, operations, and go-to-market
• Stand up operational processes where none exist yet
• Report progress directly to the founders on high-impact work

Tech stack: SQL / Python (for self-serve data analytics)

Requirements

• 2 to 5 years in investment banking, private equity, or management consulting, or prior experience in a strategic projects / delivery-lead role
• A strong technical foundation — a CS degree is ideal, but at minimum you can run your own data analysis in SQL or Python without routing everything to an engineer
• Proven ability to own ambiguous, cross-functional projects end-to-end and balance speed against quality
• An entrepreneurial, build-from-scratch mindset
• Strong communication skills, a clear bias toward ownership, and availability to work on-site in San Francisco full-time

Nice to Haves

• 2+ years leading a team
• 2+ years developing product or operational processes
• 2+ years of software engineering experience
• Prior time at a startup or high-growth company
• A consulting background
• A track record of tackling hard operational challenges
• Exposure to human data and applied AI
• Exposure to post-training and reinforcement learning

Why Join

• Ground-floor ownership reporting directly to the founders, building processes rather than inheriting them
• High-impact work at the center of a fast-growing bottleneck in AI model development
• A pedigreed, well-backed team and meaningful equity

Details

• Location — San Francisco, CA
• Work policy — On-site, full-time
• Compensation — $75,000–$100,000 base (OTE $150,000–$200,000) + equity
• Visa sponsorship — None available
• Employment type — Full-time