Director of Data Acquisition and Strategy

Position Overview

Autodesk uses a wide variety of data to power AI features in our products, referred to as “Autodesk AI.” Autodesk AI exists to help our customers automate, analyze, and augment their Design and Make workflows, enabling them to navigate industry challenges in the digital and physical realms. Supporting this is a strategy to ensure these AI features learn insights from data that provide meaningful productivity improvements for our customers.

Our AI solutions enable customers to use resources more sustainability and improve quality of life through innovative design and engineering.  In doing so, customers design and create better, allowing them to focus on strategic, creative and high-impact work rather than tedious, error prone or repetitive tasks. Trust is at the heart of our AI solutions. We prioritize customer needs, protect intellectual property, and ensure transparency through our Trusted AI Practices.

You’ll work with teammates across the globe and will travel up to 10% of the time for face-to-face meetings like conferences, team offsites, and team visits. We prefer for this role to be hybrid to our San Francisco or Portland office.

Responsibilities

The Director of Data Acquisition and Strategy, reporting to the Senior Director, Emerging Technology Partnerships and Research, owns the data acquisition function responsible for the development and maintenance of foundational datasets that are used to train a variety of models supporting AI applications in and across several industries using predominately unstructured data. This person is the leader responsible for defining strategy and coordinating business development opportunities, partnering with our industry strategy teams, to acquire foundational, high-quality datasets that are used to develop a broad set of AI features for customers in the industries we serve.

As the Director of Data Acquisition and Strategy, you will collaborate with senior stakeholders from across the company to establish strategic direction, to create and manage processes and technologies that support scaling and diversification of AI datasets, and to drive related elements of data design and platform development work. Along with a small team, you will ensure that data is available to power Autodesk AI features, while preserving our commitments to responsible data use within our Autodesk Trusted AI framework.

This work has three areas of focus:

1. Creating large datasets from data already available in the Autodesk cloud. These efforts focus on both quantity and quality of the datasets, and on process efficiency in dataset generation, storage, and use.

2. Developing new data acquisition strategies and processes targeting new data types and sources –  both structured and unstructured - from both inside and outside the company. This includes data purchase, data contracting, data partnerships, and direct creation of data.

3. Be a stakeholder helping drive improvements in data governance, data process, and platform technologies related to data acquisition.

Success looks like this

The successful candidate has a proven track record showing success in:

• Defining and championing a vision for the on-going acquisition of high-value, broadly applicable datasets for use in machine learning projects.

• Identifying and acting on high value business or product opportunities.

• Influencing corporate initiatives related to trust, ethics, data and risk management.

• Defining and analyzing metrics that inform the success of data used for ML training, testing, validation, and monitoring (aka “observability”).

• Working with senior leaders to set expectations and manage risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs.

• Networking across a large, diverse set of stakeholders and partners, distilling complex ideas to their essence to influence those people effectively.

• Influencing corporate culture.

• Showing flexibility in the face of obstacles and being able to solve complex problems creatively.

• Leading a small team in the advancement of these goals

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years’ experience in technology product management, data analytics, or engineering

• 2+ years of people management experience

• Experience with unstructured data acquisition

• Business Development experience with business contracts purchasing or licensing ML datasets

• Experience assembling, analyzing and preparing ML datasets for training and verification

• Strong understanding of key concepts in ML and the ML development lifecycle

• Experience with privacy regulations and associated processes to support GDPR, CCPA

• Familiarity with key concepts in data design and analysis, such as data models, structures, metadata, data catalogs, abstracts, etc.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience defining metrics reflecting discoverability, explorability, understandability, trustworthiness, etc. of datasets

• Experience influencing and working with external partners to deliver on common deliverables (commercial or academic partners)

• Familiarity with Responsible AI or data ethics

• Familiarity with data pipelines, including ETL processes, data models, and data-streams

• Familiarity with industry data standards or consortiums in manufacturing, architecture, engineering & construction, or media and entertainment

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – our Culture Code is at the core of everything we do. Our values and ways of working help our people thrive and realize their potential, which leads to even better outcomes for our customers.

When you’re an Autodesker, you can be your whole, authentic self and do meaningful work that helps build a better future for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Diversity & Belonging

We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging and an equitable workplace where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/diversity-and-belonging

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