Lead, Data Quality - Partnerships

• Figure is an AI robotics company developing autonomous general-purpose humanoid robots. The goal of the company is to ship humanoid robots with human level intelligence. Its robots are engineered to perform a variety of tasks in the home and commercial markets. Figure is headquartered in San Jose, CA.
• We are building the data foundation that powers our humanoid robots. The Data Quality team owns the standards, guidelines
• audit infrastructure that ensure our training data meets the bar our AI systems require. As we scale, a growing share of that work runs through external vendors
• this role owns those relationships end to end.
• As External Partnerships Lead, you'll own Figure's external data vendor portfolio for Data Quality: who we work with, what we hold them to
• how their output meets the same bar as our in-house team. You'll source and select vendors, negotiate the commercials, set and enforce SLAs
• stand up the calibration and audit processes that keep external work on standard. When a project rotates to external support, you are the senior owner of that delivery
• the Project Coordinators on it work through you

Responsibilities

• Own the full external vendor portfolio for Data Quality: sourcing, evaluation, onboarding, and offboarding of data labeling and review partners.
• Negotiate commercial terms, statements of work, and contracts, and manage pricing, budgets, and surge capacity across vendors.
• Set and enforce SLAs and acceptance criteria; hold every vendor to the same golden set and audit bar as the in-house team.
• Serve as the senior owner when a project rotates to external support, directing the Project Coordinators running that work.
• Build and run the vendor scorecard: throughput, quality, inter-annotator agreement, and SLA adherence, reviewed in regular business reviews.
• Stand up calibration exercises and golden set checks with each vendor so external output matches internal standards.
• Partner with engineering and ML stakeholders to translate data quality requirements into vendor-ready guidelines and specs.
• Plan capacity and ramp with vendors to meet project timelines, including surge needs and new regions.
• Coordinate with internal Project Coordinators and leadership on which projects rotate to which vendors and when

Requirements

• 6+ years in data quality, data labeling operations, vendor or partner management, or ML data operations, with end-to-end ownership of vendor relationships or major workstreams.
• Direct experience selecting, contracting, and managing external data vendors, including defining and enforcing SLAs.
• A track record negotiating commercial terms (pricing, SOWs, capacity) and running vendor business reviews.
• Experience setting quality standards, acceptance criteria, and audit or calibration processes that external teams executed against.
• Comfort working with engineering and ML stakeholders to translate technical requirements into operational guidance.
• Leadership across people you both do and do not directly manage, including coordinators running work on your vendors.
• Bonus Qualifications :
• Experience scaling a multi-vendor or multi-region labeling operation.
• Experience with golden set / ground truth construction.
• Background in robotics, autonomous systems, LLM, or physical AI data.
• Experience standing up new vendor operations in international or lower-cost markets.
• The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $100,000 and $160,000 annually.
• The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills
• experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.