Head of Data Acquisition

Normal Computing Corporation • New York, NY

9d

About The Position

The Normal Team builds foundational software and hardware that help move technology forward, supporting the semiconductor industry, critical AI infrastructure, and the broader systems that power our world. Normal’s AI systems depend on access to high-quality semiconductor data, which is difficult to find, fragmented across the ecosystem, and often locked behind relationships, workflows, and domain complexity. As Head of Data Acquisition, you will build and own the function responsible for identifying, acquiring, and operationalizing the datasets that power Normal's AI systems. This is a zero-to-one role at the intersection of semiconductor workflows and AI. You will spend most of your time mapping where meaningful data is generated across design and verification workflows, building relationships with the organizations that control it, and turning that access into high-quality data that directly improves model performance. The strongest candidates will have direct experience working with semiconductor or EDA workflows and understand how this data is created, structured, and used in practice.

Requirements

• Direct experience working in or closely with the semiconductor or EDA ecosystem (design, verification, fab, or adjacent tooling)
• Strong understanding of how technical datasets are generated, structured, and used in production systems
• Track record of sourcing, acquiring, or working with complex datasets in a technical environment
• Experience building and managing external partnerships, including navigating ambiguous or non-standard data access
• Ability to operate across technical and external-facing contexts, working with engineers and engaging domain experts and partners
• Comfortable operating in a zero-to-one environment with high ambiguity and full ownership

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting ML systems or working with data used for model training and evaluation
• Background in product, program management, or technical operations roles
• Experience managing data annotation or enrichment workflows
• Familiarity with data licensing, procurement, or data-centric business models

Responsibilities

• Own Normal’s semiconductor data acquisition strategy, translating ML and product needs into clear sourcing priorities
• Identify and unlock high-value datasets across the semiconductor ecosystem, particularly in front-end and back-end design and verification workflows, including both proprietary and open-source sources
• Evaluate and curate open-source semiconductor datasets, building processes to vet quality and extract signal from noisy or incomplete data
• Build and manage external partnerships, including licensing, data-sharing agreements, and long-term strategic relationships
• Work closely with ML and engineering teams to define data requirements and ensure acquired data is usable for training and evaluation
• Evaluate build vs buy vs partner decisions across different data types and sources
• Establish lightweight systems for data ingestion, validation, and iteration in collaboration with engineering
• Manage external vendors, contractors, or annotation efforts where needed to structure or enrich data

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed