Strategic Product Operations Lead

Taste Labs; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Taste Labs in San Francisco seeks a passionate individual to take ownership of data development projects. You will coordinate between researchers and engineering teams to ensure high standards of quality and creativity.

The ideal candidate will enjoy tackling ambiguous problems and optimizing processes. This hybrid role demands strong influencing skills and a technical understanding of AI. Join us in shaping the future of taste in AI!

Qualifications

• Somewhat technical, with a passion for AI research.
• Ability to turn processes into efficient systems.
• Meticulous and organized with a high bar for quality.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data development projects.
• Act as a mini-CEO overseeing cross-functional teams.
• Own relationships with internal engineering and QA teams.
• Comfortable managing ambiguity and shifting priorities.

Skills

Technical understanding of AI

Process optimization

Detail-oriented

Influencing skills

Job description

About the company

Taste Labs is building the data and infrastructure layer for taste. Our goal is to end AI slop. To make AI feel right, not just be correct. We raised $18.5M in seed co‑led by Amplify and CRV, and most frontier labs are already customers. AI has nailed objective domains and can generate anything. The hard part left is judgement: what fits, what feels like you, what's actually GREAT. We're turning that into something measurable, starting with design. We do it on two sides: building the post‑training data and RL environments that teach taste to frontier models, and the context and verification tools agents need to produce work that's more creative, more on‑brand, more right. If that problem excites you, you'll like it here!

About the role

Taste is the ability to recognize quality and explain why. It's what separates a great piece of design from a mediocre one, a great piece of writing from a flat one, a great product from a forgettable one. We teach AI models what great looks like in the subjective domains, starting with design. The whole company is built around the idea that quality in these areas is real, measurable, and worth investing in. We hire people who care about craft. You don't have to be a designer. You do have to have strong opinions about quality in something, and be able to back them up.

What you'd own

You're the DRI of data development projects. You’ll own them end to end: scoping, research, expert staffing, quality routing, partner delivery, scope management, margin. You're the connective tissue between three groups that don't naturally talk to each other: the lab researcher who needs the data, the experts producing it, and the internal engineering team building the infrastructure. Your job is to make all three feel like they're working on the same thing. This role requires people that are passionate about quality, creativity, that obsess over details, that know how to get things done and how to bring others along the way. It required being somewhat technical. And someone who’s great at turning things into machines.

How the day to day looks like

• This will feel like a hybrid operations, product and strategy role. You function as a mini‑CEO of a project or vertical.
• You work directly with researchers at frontier labs and researchers/designers internally to scope new projects and evals.
• You own the relationship and roadmap of the internal engineering team, shaping what tooling and technology we’re building.
• You own the relationship with the experts and QA teams. You own “quality” and project health, and own the resources/levers to fix anything that feels off.
• Every day is different. You have to be comfortable with ambiguity and shifting priorities.

Who we’re looking for

• You’re somewhat technical (e.g. you live in claude code, you love understanding frontier AI, research papers are fun to you)
• You’re great at turning processes into machines - making them efficient, clear, predictable, measurable. You run a tight ship.
• You like ambiguous, difficult problems
• You’re great at influencing people and rallying them around a shared objective
• You are meticulous, detail oriented, organized and have a high bar for quality for yourself and those around you
• You don’t have to have worked in human‑data companies (e.g. Mercor, Surge, Handshake)