Marketplace Operations Lead

Every project we run starts with people: software engineers, PhDs, physicians, lawyers, linguists, designers and other experts whose work trains and evaluates our customers' AI models. When a project needs 20 or 500 of them, the request comes to our Talent Matching team. We commit to a hiring timeline, find and assess the talent, and get them working by the date we promised.

The Marketplace Operations Lead takes on the hardest of those requests: US-based roles, role types we've never hired for before, and large, urgent hiring pushes where a delay is visible to the customer. When a project is falling behind, you'll be the first person we call. You'll pull in our sourcing, assessment, talent operations and onboarding teams to get it back on track, and you'll stay on it until the talent is working.

This is a senior individual-contributor role with a lot of room to grow. You'll work from our San Francisco or Palo Alto office, partner closely with matching teams in other time zones, and help set the standard for how the whole team plans, communicates and escalates. As the matching organization grows, we expect this role to grow with it.

• Pick up new hiring requests the same day they come in. Work through the requirements with the project team, flag risks early, and commit to a hiring timeline you can stand behind: how many people by which date, and what you need from the project team to get there.
• Be the single point of contact for the project team, and know the status of every open position without having to ask anyone.
• Decide how each kind of candidate should be assessed, and design the screening with the project team so it protects quality without adding days to the process.

• Raise a flag the moment a hiring timeline is at risk, and bring a plan to recover it.
• Use every option available: adjust requirements with the project team, open new sourcing channels, bring in staffing partners, adjust pay rates within approved limits, and step in on screening, scheduling or candidate calls when something stalls.
• Be the person project leaders escalate to and trust to fix it, including outside normal hours when a large hiring push needs it.

• Own hiring for US-based roles end to end, from sourcing strategy through assessment to start date.
• Take on new and unusual role types, and turn each one into a playbook the rest of the team can reuse.

• Know your numbers cold: time to first hire, hires against the committed timeline, quality after start, and how many positions are at risk and for how long. Report them in a short, standard format leadership can read in a minute.
• Work hands-on with our product and engineering teams on our matching platform, AI interviewer and assessment tools. Use them every day and send back specific feedback on what's slowing you down.
• Raise the bar for the team around you through clear process, sharp written updates and coaching in the moment.

• 5+ years in fast-moving operations roles, such as marketplace or supply operations, strategy and operations, consulting, early-stage startup operations or staffing.
• A track record of taking something that was off track and getting it delivered on a hard deadline, including the parts that weren't your job.
• A steep learning curve. You get up to speed on an unfamiliar domain quickly enough to judge what good looks like, whether that's a software engineer, a physician or a linguist.
• Excellent communication, written and in person. You give senior stakeholders and customers a clear picture in a few lines, especially when the news is bad.
• You work well with product and engineering. You adopt tools that are still being built, find what's broken, and turn it into specific, useful feedback.
• Comfort with data. You build your own reports in spreadsheets or SQL, and you manage your work from the numbers.
• High hustle and high ownership. When a step owned by someone else stalls, you step in and do it.
• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and able to work from our San Francisco or Palo Alto office

• Experience in a two-sided marketplace, or at an AI data, annotation or expert-network company.
• Experience running a supply or hiring funnel at volume (sourcing, screening, onboarding).
• Experience leading or mentoring a team.
• Experience working with distributed teams across the Americas, Europe and India.
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your own work.

• One owner per position. The person who owns the position owns the outcome, even when other teams do part of the work.
• Speed matters. We measure ourselves in days, and we're working toward hours.
• Flag problems early, with a plan. The only failure we don't accept is a surprise.
• Low ego. The outcome matters more than who gets the credit.

• $150,000 – $230,000 + equity
• Onsite in San Francisco or Palo Alto, with occasional travel.
• Reports to the Head of Platform Operations.

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