Data Collection Manager

Agility Robotics•Fremont, CA

16h•Onsite

About The Position

Agility’s commercially deployed humanoids operate alongside teams in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers—tackling physically demanding and repetitive tasks while enabling workers to focus on higher-value work. With industry-leading safety standards and years of proven deployment data, we're pioneering a new era of automation that enhances human potential. About the Role We are seeking a Manager, Data Collection to lead and scale the team responsible for teleoperation data collection supporting robot learning at Agility Robotics. This role owns the daily operating rhythm of data collection: operator staffing and training, rig and station readiness, campaign execution, vendor and contract labor management, and the throughput and data quality metrics that determine whether our AI teams get the data they need at the volume and quality they need it. Data collection is the input to our learned policies. The quality of this operation directly gates model progress. We are looking for someone who treats it as a production operation with measurable output, not as a support function.

Requirements

6+ years of experience in technical operations, data operations, manufacturing, industrial or process engineering, lab operations, or production environments.
3+ years of experience leading frontline or technical teams, including hiring, performance management, and mentoring.
Familiarity with teleoperation rigs, VR and XR capture setups, motion capture, or wearable sensor capture.
Experience running a metrics-driven operation, with accountability for throughput, quality, and utilization targets.
Experience managing vendors or contract labor, including performance and SLA management.
Experience operating and troubleshooting early-stage technology in a fast-moving environment with frequently changing priorities.
Strong command of operating KPIs such as throughput, cycle time, takt time, utilization, yield, OEE, and uptime.
Ability to build operational dashboards and reporting, and to communicate using data rather than anecdote.
Comfort with data pipeline and data quality concepts, including how collected data is validated, labeled, and delivered to downstream consumers.
Experience with tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Grafana, Tableau, Power BI, Google Workspace, or equivalent platforms.
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience establishing and growing a teleoperation or robot data collection function at another robotics, humanoid, autonomous vehicle, or embodied AI company.
Working understanding of imitation learning and robot learning data requirements, sufficient to hold a substantive conversation with AI engineers about what data is worth collecting.
Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, time studies, or similar process improvement methods.

Responsibilities

Build, train, and lead the data collection team, including robot operators and data collection specialists in Fremont.
Own hiring for the function: define the operator profile, build the interview process, and scale the team against collection demand.
Develop onboarding and ongoing training programs, including certification on teleoperation rigs, capture hardware, and task protocols, so that operator output is consistent across people and shifts.
Manage shift scheduling and coverage to match campaign demand, including extended hours or weekend coverage when program milestones require it.
Build a career path from data collection into system test, robot operations, and other technical roles across the organization.
Promote a culture of safety, including proper use of teleoperation and capture equipment, ergonomics, and adherence to safety procedures.
Own day-to-day readiness of teleoperation stations, capture rigs, robots, and workcells used for data collection, and coordinate with engineering and technical support on calibration, configuration, and return to service.
Plan and execute collection campaigns against the task taxonomy and volume targets set with AI Engineering, including scoping, scheduling, and progress reporting.
Identify bottlenecks through workflow analysis, time studies, and capacity modeling, then drive practical fixes.
Lead root cause analysis on recurring operational issues, including rig downtime, capture failures, and protocol drift, and follow through on corrective actions.
Create and maintain SOPs, work instructions, task protocols, and process controls, and manage change control when protocols or hardware are updated.
Support rollout of new capture hardware, sensors, and tooling in partnership with Engineering, Facilities, and Safety.
Own and report the core operating metrics for data collection: episode throughput per operator hour and per shift, usable episode yield and rejection rate, station utilization, rig uptime and downtime, cycle time, operator productivity, and cost per usable episode.
Define and enforce the quality bar in partnership with AI Engineering, including what makes an episode usable, and drive first-pass yield up over time.
Track coverage against the target task and scenario taxonomy so gaps are visible before they block model work.
Build dashboards and reporting that give AI Engineering and leadership live visibility into collection volume, quality, and capacity without having to ask.
Use operational data to drive continuous improvement in throughput, quality, and unit cost.
Own vendor and contract labor relationships supporting data collection, including sourcing, scoping statements of work, rate negotiation, onboarding, and offboarding.
Define and manage vendor performance against quality, throughput, and SLA commitments, and hold vendors accountable to the same metrics as internal staff.
Manage the mix of internal and contract capacity to flex with campaign demand while protecting data quality and continuity.
Evaluate external data collection service providers where in-house capacity is not the right answer, and make build versus buy recommendations with supporting cost and quality data.
Partner with AI, Perception, and Skills engineering teams to translate the model roadmap into concrete collection plans: which tasks, which scenarios, how many episodes, at what quality bar, by when.
Serve as the operational point of contact for new data collection projects, from scoping through delivery.
Close the loop with AI Engineering on which collected data actually improved policy performance, and use that to reprioritize collection rather than optimizing volume alone.
Translate engineering data requirements into operator-executable protocols, and translate operator-observed issues back into engineering terms.

Benefits

401(k) Plan: Includes a 6% company match.
Equity: Company stock options.
Insurance Coverage: 100% company-paid medical, dental, vision, and short/long-term disability insurance for employees.
Benefit Start Date: Eligible for benefits on your first day of employment.
Well-Being Support: Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Time Off: Exempt Employees: Flexible, unlimited PTO and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown.
Time Off: Non-Exempt Employees: 10 vacation days, paid sick leave, and 12 company holidays, including a winter shutdown, annually.
On-Site Perks: Catered lunches four times a week and a variety of healthy snacks and refreshments at our Salem and Pittsburgh locations.
Parental Leave: Generous paid parental leave programs.
Work Environment: A culture that supports flexible work arrangements.
Growth Opportunities: Professional development and tuition reimbursement programs.
Relocation Assistance: Provided for eligible roles.
Annual Discretionary Bonus: Provided for eligible roles.