Data Collection Partnerships Lead

Sieve•San Francisco, CA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Sieve builds training data that helps AI understand and interact with the world, working with leading AI labs across video, audio, images, text, and 3D. The company is expanding its global network of data collection partners to support robotics and physical AI, which require data gathered from people performing real tasks in real environments. The Data Collection Partnerships Lead will build and scale Sieve’s network of external data collection vendors, owning vendor development and ongoing management. The role includes sourcing and qualifying collection companies and local operations teams, negotiating agreements, launching pilots, and managing partners through accepted data collection hours and sustained production across countries, environments, and data types. Partners provide their own access and collection operations; the Lead owns partner relationships and their commercial and operational performance, collaborating with hardware, engineering, quality, and delivery teams to ensure collected data meets Sieve’s requirements. The position is based at Sieve’s San Francisco office five days per week, with travel to partner operations as needed.

Requirements

At least 5 years of relevant experience in supplier development, vendor operations, data operations, outsourcing, or a related role with direct responsibility for external partner delivery.
A track record of personally sourcing, negotiating with, onboarding, and scaling suppliers or operational partners.
Experience managing partner performance against quality, volume, timeline, and cost commitments, including resolving missed targets and difficult commercial conversations.
Strong commercial and analytical judgment, including evaluating pricing, modeling unit economics, building capacity forecasts, and identifying constraints behind missed targets.
Technical fluency and curiosity; ability to learn collection requirements, turn them into clear partner instructions, and work effectively with engineering and quality teams.
Strong organization, clear communication, and consistent follow-through across multiple partners, countries, and time zones.
Willingness to travel to partner operations when needed.
Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate.

Nice To Haves

Experience buying or managing data collection, annotation, or other human-in-the-loop services.
Familiarity with robotics, egocentric video, wearable capture systems, or AI training data.
Experience building supplier networks across multiple countries.
Experience hiring or leading a small operations team.
SQL, scripting, or automation skills that help improve reporting and operational workflows.

Responsibilities

Source and qualify collection vendors across countries, environments, and data types; assess their access, staffing, equipment, economics, and collection capabilities.
Run structured sample reviews and pilots with technical teams to determine what partners can reliably produce.
Negotiate pricing, payment schedules, volume ramps, and performance commitments, and work with legal and finance on agreements covering data rights and responsibilities.
Translate collection requirements into partner plans, milestones, and onboarding steps, and coordinate internal support to move promising partners into production.
Manage vendor relationships beyond onboarding and pilots; regularly review accepted data collection hours, quality, cost, coverage, and delivery reliability.
Expand successful vendors and address underperformance directly.
Resolve collection, upload, equipment, and quality issues with partners and internal teams; set corrective actions, assign owners, and follow through.
Maintain records of agreements, specifications, pilot results, production capacity, and risks.
Create playbooks for pricing and regional targets and for qualifying partners more efficiently.