Operations Manager, Robotics Data

Foundry Robotics•San Francisco, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Foundry Robotics is building an AI-native robotics manufacturing company focused on deploying advanced assembly and production capability for leading robotics companies and national-security-critical hardware. We are reimagining manufacturing through advanced robotics. Our mission is to rebuild the American manufacturing industry as an AI-first, assembly-focused, dual-use contract manufacturer. We aim to empower manufacturers with intelligent, efficient, and adaptable robotic systems that redefine productivity and quality. This role is for an Operations Manager who thrives on building and running a high-performance contractor workforce, equally comfortable designing onboarding programs from first principles and walking the floor to fix what's broken in real time. You will own the people-and-process layer that turns billable contractor hours into delivered, usable data, managing 50+ operators executing UMI gripper, egocentric, and VR teleop data collection against real customer contracts. You will stand up workforce operations from scratch and drive rapid build-test-learn cycles to deliver an operation that is both rigorous and scalable. You will partner closely with the Technical Program Manager, Robotics Data, to own rig calibration, QA spec, and the data pipeline handoff. Together you are accountable for whether the floor ships what the model teams need.

Requirements

3–5 years managing a contractor or hourly workforce of 30+ in a high-throughput operations environment (data collection, AV ops, manufacturing, fulfillment, clinical trials, field ops)
Proven ability to build workforce operations from the ground up and improve on existing programs
Comfortable owning operator scorecards, SOP execution, and standardization
Equally effective at a desk and on the floor, with deep hands-on experience running a shift and solving problems in real time
Track record tracking and improving operational metrics (throughput, quality, retention, certification rates)
Experience designing onboarding, certification, and performance management programs in a cross-functional environment
Collaborative by nature, you consider downstream impacts on data quality, engineering, and operators when making operational decisions
Bias toward action, scrappy problem solving, and moving fast without sacrificing rigor

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end workforce lifecycle for 50+ operators, including sourcing, screening, hiring, onboarding, certification, performance management, and offboarding
Run the daily operations cadence, including shift planning, station assignments, breaks, and coverage
Manage shift leads (3–5 direct reports) and operate escalation paths into engineering
Build and review operator scorecards weekly, tracking success rate, rejection rate, and throughput, surfacing and managing the 60–95% quality variance common across operators
Design and execute a quality-first incentive structure
Build the onboarding curriculum and certification gating, ensuring no operator captures production data until certified on the rig and task
Run live floor QA, catching issues in real time against SOPs co-authored with the TPM
Execute operator training, certification, and pilot batch readiness when new tasks ramp up
Own fleet readiness on the floor, including daily rig health checks, in-shift swaps, spares staging, and ensuring every station is production-ready at shift start
Own contractor timekeeping, the payroll vendor relationship, and floor logistics including layout, station configuration, supplies, badging, safety, EHS, and facilities
Manage VR teleop floor logistics, including headset hygiene, motion sickness rotation policies, and controller battery and charging logistics
Run a continuous improvement program (Kaizen / 6S) focused on throughput, ergonomics, and station efficiency
Build the career ladder for top operators (operator → senior → trainer → shift lead)
Define and report against operations-level OKRs for throughput, quality, and operator performance
Enforce data governance on the floor, ensuring operators handle customer data per contractual and regulatory requirements