Data & Strategy Lead

About the role

You will partner tightly with research and modeling teams to identify precisely where frontier models fail, using evals and direct customer feedback as your primary evidence. You will design, source, and maintain the evaluation suite that defines quality for our models, grounding every requirement in observed customer failures and continuous benchmark analysis. You will establish entirely new sources of high-quality human data, building collection pipelines from the ground up and owning data quality from initial acquisition through final delivery to the modeling team. You will stay close to the research literature, reading recent papers and understanding which datasets move specific capabilities, then collaborating closely with researchers to determine the next data collection priority. You will operate with commercial acumen, engaging directly with customers, enabling the go-to-market team, and driving revenue growth through data-informed insights. You will bring extreme ownership and low ego, bias for rapid action, and the ability to thrive in highly ambiguous environments where processes do not yet exist. You will set high standards for yourself and others, acting as a bar raiser who ensures that every decision is outcomes oriented and aligned with the company mission.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Partner with research and modeling teams to pinpoint failure modes using eval frameworks and customer conversation insights.
• Design and iterate on evaluation datasets that become the primary signal for model performance and release criteria.
• Source and curate high-quality human-generated data, constructing collection workflows and quality assurance mechanisms from scratch.
• Translate research findings and benchmark results into concrete data requirements that guide collection priorities.
• Maintain rigorous tracking of eval performance over time, ensuring continuous improvement and regression prevention.
• Engage directly with enterprise customers to understand real-world failure modes and translate them into data tasks.
• Enable the go-to-market team with data-backed narratives that demonstrate model quality and roadmap alignment.
• Drive revenue growth by linking data strategy to measurable improvements in customer outcomes and product reliability.
• Build and refine data pipelines that automate ingestion, validation, and delivery of high-value training and eval data.
• Operate with speed and precision, making decisions under uncertainty while maintaining extreme ownership of outcomes.

Requirements

• Bring 3-10 years of experience in high-ownership roles such as founder, general manager, or strategy and operations within a startup environment.
• Demonstrate technical fluency with data and operations, including advanced proficiency in SQL as a non-negotiable requirement.
• Hold yourself and others to a consistently high bar, with a demonstrated bias for action and meticulous attention to detail.
• Comfortably navigate ambiguity and sustain performance under a rapid pace without sacrificing quality.
• Exhibit low-ego collaboration, working effectively with researchers, engineers, and executives toward shared company goals.
• Show strong mission-driven focus, aligning daily work with the long-term vision of building AI that learns and interacts like humans.
• Thrive in roles where processes are built iteratively, taking ownership of undefined problems and creating structure from scratch.
• Commit to E-Verify participation and compliance, understanding that Cartesia will provide federal government Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire.

Nice to have

• Prior experience in AI or machine learning data operations at scale, managing complex datasets and evaluation workflows.
• Background in audio, speech, or language-related workflows, providing domain intuition for multimodal and verbal interfaces.
• Educational or professional background in computer science, industrial engineering, or a related technical field that supports rigorous systems thinking.

Practical notes

This role is full-time and based in our San Francisco headquarters office. Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire. Visa sponsorship is available and assessed on a case-by-case basis, though approval depends on role location and individual circumstances, with final decisions made in coordination with our recruiting team. We operate as an in-person team, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Bangalore, and we expect consistent presence in the office to enable fast execution and close collaboration. As we ship fast on novel and cutting edge work, we maintain a high bar for quality and design without compromising execution speed.