Program Lead

Reka

$125K — $150K *
Technical Services
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Early-stage marketplace operating experience required.
  • AI-native, focusing on automation over hiring.
  • Proven operating experience in high-growth startups.
  • Ability to solve structured problems under pressure.
  • Strong quantitative skills for building and analyzing models.
  • Excellent communication skills with both technical leads and operational teams.
  • Bonus: familiarity with AI labs or training data pipelines.

Responsibilities

  • Transform open-ended research needs into structured programs with defined scope and economics.
  • Engage directly with labs and robotics teams to ensure client confidence and program delivery.
  • Build and manage a supply side from scratch, recruiting and activating contributors as needed.
  • Address and resolve blockers in real-time, ranging from technical specs to team incentives.
  • Act as a product manager, guiding platform development with evidence from the field.
  • Maintain a hands-on presence where the work occurs, ensuring operational efficiency.
  • Develop leverage through agents and automation for scalability in program execution.

Benefits

  • Collaborative and innovative work environment.
  • Opportunity to work with frontier labs and robotics, pushing technological boundaries.
  • Responsibility for high-impact projects with direct client engagement.
  • Chance to build processes and systems that enhance efficiency.
  • Exposure to cutting-edge AI technologies and methodologies.
Full Job Description
Claru (a Reka business line) • San Francisco • Full-time

Text has run out. The physical world - where skill lives - has never been recorded in a form a model can learn from. Claru is building that layer.

We sell data to frontier labs and robotics companies: zero to seven figures of ARR in under six months, with a team of five. It is a two-sided marketplace: labs arrive with a research problem and a budget, not a specification; contributors and partner businesses capture the work they already do, paid per approved unit. Both sides get built engagement by engagement. That is this job.

We are hiring a Program Lead and are looking for operators who are AI-native: more time with agents than with people, automation before hiring, systems that scale rather than teams that grow. That is how a team this small outruns much bigger companies. You need to be someone who can be dropped into an unfamiliar problem, with a client waiting, and come back with a plan that holds.

What you'll do
  • Turn an open-ended research need into a program with a scope, a standard, a timeline and agreed economics - then own the number
  • Work directly with frontier labs and robotics teams: turn a research problem into something deliverable, keep sophisticated buyers confident, and own the relationship from first call to delivery
  • Partner with our supply team to build the supply side from nothing if needed: recruit, activate and retain the contributors and partner businesses a program needs, in industries and geographies where none exists
  • Go at whichever blocker is in front of you: some days a spec or a tooling gap, other days a person, a partner or an incentive
  • Act as product manager for the platform team: your field evidence decides what gets built next, and you speak for the contributor and the client in the roadmap
  • Go where the work happens; physical operations are won by whoever showed up
  • Build leverage as you go - agents, automation, playbooks - so the second program costs a fraction of the first and the tenth runs itself


A typical day

There is no standard one, but a real day might run like this: you start on the programs already live - checking with the team that supply is filming, that yesterday's batches cleared the quality bar, and chasing the sites that have gone quiet. A buyer wants to change the spec mid-program, so you work out what that does to volume, timeline and cost, and get the new version agreed in writing. Then a first call with a lab you have not worked with before: understand what they are trying to train, and be straight about what we can produce and what we cannot.

What we're looking for
  • Early-stage marketplace operating experience - required. You have had to get a flywheel turning from a standing start, in a new territory or a new vertical, where neither side existed yet and you had to build both. Every engagement here is that problem again
  • AI-native - required. You spend more time with agents than with people, you automate a process before you staff it, and your answer to more volume is a better system rather than more headcount
  • You have operated, not only advised. Former founders, high growth early stage startup hires, consulting, or business operations background is a strong plus and exactly the rigour we want
  • Structured problem solving under pressure: first principles, then a plan a client and a team can both act on
  • Numerate - you build the model, find where the economics break, and argue for the change
  • Credible with a research lead and with a shift supervisor alike
  • Bonus: exposure to AI labs or training data pipelines


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