Member of Technical Staff, Data Program Manager

Odyssey

Data Program Manager responsible for data needs and vendor management at Odyssey, an AI lab pioneering world models. Involves program management at the intersection of AI research and data operations.

Posted 5/1/2026full-timePalo Alto • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

SQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Run at data plans with loose requirements from research. Turn fuzzy and disparate data requests into scoped, sequenced acquisition plans with quality bars, timelines, and clear data parameters
Manage a multitude of vendors across verticals and data types, maintain relationships and negotiate commercials favorable to Odyssey
Manage the human teams (experience with contractors a big plus) that acquire proprietary data and establish and ensure quality measures
Stand up and own the weekly data-needs review and forecast. Force-prioritize when necessary and surface the trade-offs to leadership.
Embed in research planning. Flag data risks four to six weeks ahead of when they would hit a model run.
Define and track quality and throughput metrics across active data programs. Redline and QA batches that slip and close the loop with vendors.
Partner with Research on data requirements while also running independently at frontier data mix delivery
Drive program retrospectives – what data moved which evals, at what cost, and what we should repeat.

Requirements

What you’ll need

5+ years of program or product management at a technical company, with at least two of those years in an AI, ML, or data-intensive context.
You can read ML papers without flinching; you don’t need to derive the math, but you understand what the research is trying to prove and what data would support it
Working knowledge of SQL and basic data analysis. You can pull your own numbers when needed
Real experience negotiating with external vendors and pushing costs down
You can run a tight standup, keep clean docs, and finish things
Comfort saying “no” to a researcher; better at saying “yes, by week six, here’s the plan”
Track record of driving cross-functional programs at velocity in environments where priorities change weekly

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance
Flexible work arrangements

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

program managementproduct managementdata analysisSQLdata quality metricsdata acquisitionvendor negotiationdata forecastingcross-functional program managementAI

Soft Skills

relationship managementnegotiationprioritizationcommunicationleadershipproblem-solvingadaptabilityorganizational skillsteam managementdecision-making