Data & Strategy Lead

Our mission is to architect AI that learns from and interacts with the world like humans do.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

About the Role

The Data & Strategy Team reports directly to Cartesia's founders and shapes our models capabilities. We work alongside researchers to find where models break, through evals and direct customer conversations, and then fix them by sourcing high quality data. We're looking for people who bring technical depth, operational rigor, and high agency, who want to have a lot of impact.

As a Data & Strategy Lead, you'll have broad ownership and autonomy to shape one of the most important inputs to frontier AI models. You'll work across research, product, and go-to-market teams, make decisions with incomplete information, and build new processes from the ground up. If you enjoy solving ambiguous problems, learning quickly, and creating leverage through systems, you'll thrive in this role.

Your Impact

• Partner tightly with research and modeling teams to find where models fail, through evals and direct customer conversations.

• Design, source, and maintain the evals that define quality for our models. Ground them in observed customer failures, benchmark continuously against other systems, and turn the results into concrete data requirements.

• Establish new sources of human data to advance model performance, building collection pipelines from scratch, and own data quality from acquisition through delivery.

• Stay close to the research. Read papers, understand what datasets move which capabilities, and collaborate with the team on what data to collect next.

• Be commercially minded. Engage with customers, enable the GTM team, and drive revenue growth.

Principles for the role

• Bias for action

• Extreme ownership, low ego

• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments

• High standards and accountability

• Bar raiser

• Outcomes oriented

• Winning mentality

What You Bring

• 3–10 years of experience in high-ownership roles (e.g., founder, GM, or strategy/ops at a startup).

• Technical fluency with data and operations; SQL proficiency required.

• Holds themselves and other to a high bar, bias to action, and strong attention to detail.

• Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid pace.

• Low-ego, collaborative, and mission-driven, focused on team and company success.

Nice to Have

• Experience in AI/ML data operations or large-scale operations

• Background in audio, speech, or language-related workflows

• Background in CS, industrial engineering, or similar.

Note: Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire.

🏢 In-office policy: We’re an in-person team based out of offices in 🇺🇸 San Francisco, 🇬🇧 London and 🇮🇳 Bangalore. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day.

🌎 Visa sponsorship: We provide visa sponsorship support and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. However, visa sponsorship is dependent on many factors, including the role you are applying for, and the location you are going to be based, and so we can't always guarantee success. Your Recruiter will work with you to understand your visa sponsorship needs from the first call.

🚢 We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way.

🤝 We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.

💰 Compensation Competitive base salary alongside attractive equity package.

🩺 Health Insurance Fully covered medical insurance along with dental and vision for you and your family.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Parental Leave 9 weeks paternity & 12 weeks maternity leave

🏦 401(k)

🚆 Commuter Allowance A monthly stipend to help you get to and from the office.

🏖️ Flexible PTO Take as much time as you need to recharge your batteries.

🍲 Meals & Snacks Lunch, dinner and plenty of snacks, provided daily.

🦖 Your own personal Yoshi

Cartesia is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.