Strategic Projects Lead

Full-time Compensation: $75,000-$100,000 base (OTE $150,000-$200,000) + equity 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 #J-18808-Ljbffr David Joseph & Company