Director, AI Data Operations

About AiDASH

AiDASH is an enterprise AI company and the leading provider of vegetation risk intelligence for electric utilities. Powered by proprietary VegetationAI™ technology, AiDASH delivers a unified remote grid inspection and monitoring platform that uses a SatelliteFirst approach to identify and address vegetation and other threats to the grid. With a prevention-first strategy to mitigate wildfire risk and minimize storm impacts, AiDASH helps more than 140 utilities reduce costs, improve reliability, and lower liability across their networks. AiDASH exists to safeguard critical utility infrastructure and secure the future of humanAIty™. Learn more at www.aidash.com.

We are a Series C growth company backed by leading investors, including Shell Ventures, National Grid Partners, G2 Venture Partners, Duke Energy, Edison International, Lightrock, Marubeni, among others. We have been recognized by Forbes two years in a row as one of America's Best Startup Employers. We are also proud to be one of the few software companies in Time Magazine's America's Top GreenTech Companies 2024. Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ recently ranked us at No. 12 among San Francisco Bay Area companies, and No. 59 overall in their selection of the top 500 for 2024.

Join us in Securing Tomorrow!

The Role

As Director, AI Data Operations, you will own the people and operational backbone of a 50+ person team that powers data operations for AiDASH's proprietary models — across model quality control for customer deliveries, training data generation for AI models, and multi-modal imagery sourcing. The team's work directly determines the quality of our models, the rate at which our models improve, and what we ship to customers.

Reporting directly to VP, Product & Process Excellence; you will lead this team through a major transformation — from manual operations to AI-augmented operations — while raising the bar on quality, ownership, and execution. You will thrive in this role if you have run annotation pipelines, training data workflows, or model quality control operations, ideally in an AI product company — and you are ready to bring that experience to a domain where the stakes are high and the work has real-world consequences.

How you'll make an impact:

• Lead, inspire, and scale a 50+ person team — establishing clear accountability, operational discipline, and a high-ownership culture
• Drive operations against defined quality benchmarks and efficiency targets (e.g. QC accuracy, delivery turnaround time, on-time delivery, throughput, and cost efficiency)
• Drive image sourcing strategy — keeping abreast of industry trends, finding new vendors, managing commercial relationships, and managing image acquisition
• Drive an AI-first transformation of the function — pilot and embed AI agents / LLMs, and modern tooling that fundamentally shifts how the work gets done
• Build and implement repeatable processes, playbooks, and staffing strategies to ensure the organization runs efficiently in an AI-first manner
• Develop and retain top operational talent
• Collaborate & partner globally with with India and US based R&D teams— data science, platform engineering, product management — and with Customer Success teams to align operations with model training needs and customer commitments

What we're looking for:

• A senior operations leader (12+ years, 5+ managing 50+ headcount) who has built and run quality-critical operations at scale, preferably with experience of annotation/ML data ops
• Manager-of-managers credentials, with credibility across technical, product, and senior leadership
• Passionate about driving operational excellence and using AI to reshape work; hands-on experience leading AI-led transformations, even if smaller-scale or in progress. We care about your conviction, AI fluency, and pattern recognition. This is a core requirement for the role
• A track record of building high-ownership cultures in operational functions
• A high-quality bar and strong operating discipline — metrics, SLAs, and rhythms are how you run

Good to have

• Background in GIS, remote sensing, satellite imagery, or geospatial data
• Experience with annotation operations or imagery and data vendor procurement

What you'll love:

• Leading one of the largest and strategically important teams at AiDASH
• A real mandate to transform an operational function with AI
• Working alongside high-caliber peers who value ownership, low ego, and measurable impact

What This Role Is Not

• ❌ A data engineering or analytics role — you won't be building data platforms, dashboards, or BI pipelines; you'll be running the operations – people, process, vendors - that determine the quality of our AI models
• ❌ A digital transformation consulting role — this isn't a strategy-and-handoff engagement; you'll own execution and be accountable for what ships to customers
• ❌ A program management role — you won't be tracking milestones and sending status updates; you'll be setting the bar for quality and driving the team to hit it
• ❌ A senior individual contributor role — you'll lead a 50+ person team through significant change; what matters most isn't what you can do yourself, but what you can get a team to do together.

In Summary

This role is about people leadership, operational excellence, and leading the AI transformation of a function where precision, ownership, and quality are everything. If you love running great teams, setting a high bar, and are excited to use AI to reshape how operational work gets done, this is your role. One requirement: you've worked close to the model — in annotation pipelines, training data workflows, or quality operations — rather than in data analytics, BI, or IT services delivery.

We are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to embracing diversity and inclusion in our hiring practices, and we promote a work environment where everyone, from any race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, can do their best work.

We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible interview experience for all candidates. Please let us know if you require any accommodation during the interview process, and we will make every effort to meet your needs.

Read our Privacy Policy here: https://www.aidash.com/policy/privacy-policy/