Senior Manager, Data Collections Operations

Walden Robotics•Cambridge, MA

6d•$187,000 - $250,000

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Data Collection Operations leads the team responsible for producing data on real robots, in simulation, and through egocentric capture across multiple internal sites and shifts. The role sets the team's priorities and data quality standards and builds the organization needed to deliver data reliably. It will scale an existing operation to support more robots, shifts, sites, data modalities, and experiments from the AI team, working closely with research, hardware, and product leaders.

Requirements

At least 7 years of operations experience, including at least 3 years of people management and managing leads, supervisors, or other managers.
Direct experience in data collection or data operations supporting AI/ML development.
Experience running shift-based, hourly, or contract workforces, including hiring and training at volume.
Track record of workforce and capacity planning, including sizing teams, allocating people and resources across competing priorities, and defending decisions to leadership.
Experience building SOPs, training programs, and quality standards for an operational team.
Track record of building operational metrics and reporting from scratch and using them to drive decisions.
Ability to translate technical requirements from engineering or research teams into clear operational plans.
Clear written and verbal communication with operators, engineers, and leadership.
Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing a blended full-time and contract workforce, including staffing partners and contract-to-full-time conversion.
Background in robotics, autonomous vehicles, teleoperation, or other hardware-in-the-loop operations.
Experience with simulation or egocentric data collection.
Experience standing up new shifts or sites in a multi-site operation.
Applied use of AI tools to improve workflows, with clear ownership of the output.

Responsibilities

Own data collection outcomes across internal sites and shifts, including data volume, quality, and timely delivery against company priorities.
Set long-term data collection strategy with AI, research, and product leadership, including collection modalities and capacity allocation across competing programs.
Oversee task development, SOPs and playbooks, and data quality standards across teleoperation, simulation, egocentric, and other modalities.
Oversee day-to-day operations and hold site coordinators and shift leads accountable for plans that keep sites and shifts productive.
Set utilization, throughput, and data quality goals; align on them across the organization; and establish operating cadence and reporting for leadership and continuous improvement.
Lead a team of teams across sites and shifts, including functional leads, site coordinators, shift leads, and full-time and contract workers.
Coach and develop staff, provide regular feedback, define growth opportunities and career paths, and make contract-to-full-time decisions.
Own workforce planning and hiring, including determining roles and resource needs, launching shifts and sites, defining roles, recruiting and interviewing, and onboarding and training staff in partnership with recruiting and staffing partners.
Partner with Deployment Operations on capacity and data strategy to bootstrap deployment staffing, and with Fleet Operations on hardware availability and new hardware rollouts.