Data Operations

XYZ Venture Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 300,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision benefits

Unlimited PTO

Paid parental leave

Relocation support

Job summary

Thinking Machines in San Francisco, CA is seeking a hands-on Data Operations specialist to help researchers access data for model training and evaluation. You will partner with researchers, source data, evaluate vendors, and build scalable processes that improve quality and speed.

You'll own data projects from sourcing through delivery, work with international vendors when needed, and help shape practical data governance while aligning with research priorities.

Qualifications

• Own operational, data, program, or vendor work from start to finish.
• Experience with data vendors, ideally in AI or tech.
• Strong problem-solving instincts and willingness to dig in.
• Comfortable working directly with researchers or technical teams and turning loosely defined needs into action.
• Good judgment about quality and willingness to inspect work closely, not just follow process.
• Strong communication across teams, vendors, and cultures.
• Able to adapt to ambiguity, changing priorities, and tight timelines.
• High initiative and willingness to move the work forward.

Responsibilities

• Understand data needs from researchers and translate requests into concrete plans.
• Own data projects from sourcing and vendor selection through quality review to delivery.
• Find best vendors, experts, and data sources for different tasks.
• Build and maintain partnerships with data vendors, including international partners.
• Review data with researchers and vendors, identify quality issues and improve outputs.
• Deep-dive into new data domains and learn what good looks like quickly.
• Create guidelines, processes, and tools to make recurring work scalable.
• Automate repetitive tasks where appropriate while staying close to judgment-required work.
• Collaborate with legal and other teams on vendor relationships and compliance.

Skills

Vendor management

Data sourcing

Problem solving

Communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Initiative

Process improvement

Structure

Job description

About Thinking Machines

The mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.

About the Role

We're looking for someone to join Data Operations and help researchers get the data they need to train and evaluate our models.

You'll work directly with researchers to understand what they need, figure out how to get it, and own the work through delivery. Sometimes that means finding the right vendor. Sometimes it means digging into a new domain, finding unusual sources of data, or working through a request we haven't seen before.

This is a hands-on role. You'll spend time talking directly with vendors, reviewing data quality, and building processes and systems that make the work easier to repeat and scale.

Our research priorities change quickly, so the work will too. We're looking for someone who is resourceful, flexible, and comfortable figuring things out as they go.

What You'll Do

• Work with researchers to understand what data they need and turn open-ended requests into a concrete plan.




• Own data projects from sourcing and vendor selection through quality review and delivery.




• Find the best vendors, experts, and data sources for different types of work.




• Build and maintain strong partnerships with data vendors, including international partners.




• Review data with researchers and vendors, identify quality issues, and improve the output.




• Go deep on new data domains when needed and quickly learn what good looks like.




• Build guidelines, processes, and tools that make recurring work easier and more scalable.




• Automate repetitive work where it makes sense while staying close to the work that requires judgment.




• Work with legal and other teams on practical ways to manage vendor relationships, and adhere to communication guidelines.




• Manage multiple projects against research and model timelines and adjust quickly as priorities change.

Skills and Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Experience owning operational, data, product, program, or vendor work from start to finish.




• Experience working with data vendors ideally in AI or technology.




• Strong problem-solving instincts and a willingness to dig in when there isn't an obvious answer.




• Comfortable working directly with researchers or technical teams and turning loosely defined needs into action.




• Good judgment about quality and a willingness to inspect the work closely rather than rely only on process.




• Strong communication skills across different teams, vendors, and cultures.




• Comfortable with ambiguity, changing priorities, and tight timelines.




• High initiative and willingness to do whatever part of the job is needed to move the work forward.




• Able to add useful structure without overcomplicating things.

Preferred qualifications — we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these

• Experience with pre-training, post-training, evaluation, annotation, or other AI data types.




• Existing relationships with a diverse set of AI or related data vendors.




• Experience at an AI company, data company, marketplace, or other fast-moving technology company.




• Experience working with international vendors and cross-border operational or compliance issues.




• Product, program, operations, or generalist experience in an environment where you had to build the process as you went.




• Experience building simple tooling or automation to reduce manual operational work.

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, CA.




• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $300,000 - $350,000.




• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.




• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.

As set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Thinking Machines Lab will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the California Fair Chance Act, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and any other applicable state or local fair chance ordinance or law.