Research & Product Lead — Sieve

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 days/week)
Compensation: $150,000 – $250,000 base + competitive equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available
Experience Level: 1–2+ years depending on track
Employment Type: Full-Time
Headcount: 3 open seats

Sieve is the only AI research company focused exclusively on video data infrastructure and video intelligence. Their thesis: video training data quality is one of the largest constraints in frontier AI model development. Video accounts for 80% of internet traffic — and Sieve is building the foundational layer to advance video AI at scale.

• Exabyte-scale video infrastructure with proprietary video understanding systems
• Multiple millions in quarterly revenue
• Team of approximately 15
• Series A backed by Matrix Partners, Swift Ventures, Y Combinator, and AI Grant
• Partners with frontier AI labs and Fortune 100 enterprise customers

This is a hybrid strategic operator, technical product, and customer-facing AI role. This is not pure product management. This is not pure research. This is not pure sales. This is a high-leverage generalist role sitting between technical customer engagement, product strategy, applied research coordination, and internal operational scaling — working directly alongside the founders.

Core ownership includes:

• Managing relationships with frontier AI labs
• Owning strategic technical customer engagement and translating requirements into product priorities
• AI workflow, data pipeline, model performance, and dataset composition strategy discussions with technical stakeholders
• Cross-functional execution across product, research, partnerships, and operations
• Internal systems and process design
• Operational scaling initiatives and company-wide special projects

Senior Track — target backgrounds include existing relationships with frontier AI labs, human data ecosystem experience, AI infrastructure relationship ownership, and technical commercial operators. Strong target companies: Scale AI, Surge, Sapien, Mercor, Invisible, Toloka, Snorkel, Defined.ai, Datasaur.

Generalist Track — target backgrounds include 1–2 years post-MBB or top-tier consulting, investment banking, APM at an AI company, or engineering degree with strong technical curiosity.

• Bachelor's in CS or equivalent technical degree
• Strong ML/AI workflow understanding — data pipelines, model training, model quality tradeoffs
• Technical credibility with researchers, engineers, and senior technical stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication; ability to translate between technical and business audiences
• High curiosity, high EQ, scrappiness, and fast learning ability
• Comfort with ambiguity and startup adaptability
• Willingness to work onsite in San Francisco 5 days per week

• Frontier AI lab relationships
• Human data company background
• Product or technical operations experience
• Customer-facing technical role experience
• Startup early-hire experience
• Video, media, or content technology familiarity

Highest signals: trusted relationships with frontier labs, human data company backgrounds (Scale AI, Surge, Mercor, etc.), strong technical commercial credibility, and product-minded technical operators. Strong alternative: top consulting background with technical degree, AI product exposure, or high-agency technical generalists.

• Pure account management or CSM profiles with weak technical depth
• Pure technical operators with no relationship or commercial instinct
• Traditional enterprise SaaS sales profiles without ML context
• Candidates unable to hold peer-level conversations with researchers

1. Application review
2. Initial screen
3. 2nd round
4. CEO intro chat
5. Onsite
6. Offer

• Role is fully onsite in San Francisco — 5 days/week — please only apply if you can commit to this
• No visa sponsorship available

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Sieve.