Research & Product Lead — Sieve

San Francisco

**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 **About Sieve** 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 **About The Role** 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 Candidate Tracks **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. **Requirements** * 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 Nice to Have * 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 Target Backgrounds 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. This Role Is NOT For * 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 **Benefits** * Competitive compensation and equity * Health insurance * Free lunch and dinner Interview Process * Application review * Initial screen * 2nd round * CEO intro chat * Onsite * Offer Logistics * 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.