Founding Operations - India

About Us
Sieve is a multi-modal lab curating the world's highest-quality training datasets, spanning video, audio, images, text, and 3D. We combine exabyte-scale data infrastructure and novel multimodal understanding techniques that push the frontier of foundation models. Video alone makes up 80% of internet traffic, and across modalities, data has become the enabling medium powering creativity, communication, gaming, AR/VR, and robotics. Sieve exists to solve the biggest bottleneck in the growth of these applications: high-quality training data.
We partner with top AI labs and did $XXM last quarter alone, as a team of ~30 people. We also raised our Series A from Tier 1 firms such as Matrix Partners, Swift Ventures, Y Combinator, and AI Grant.
Why Now
Physical AI needs footage of real people doing real work across a wide range of environments. India has more of these environments than almost anywhere, and we're building our collection operation here from the ground up. We're looking for someone to own that operation as one of our first hires in the country, and to help unlock the businesses and workplaces we collect in.
About the Role
You'll run Sieve's data collection operation in India, starting in Bengaluru. You'll take sites from confirmed access through to live deployments producing usable footage every day, then turn what works into a repeatable system as we add sites and cities. You'll combine hands-on field operations with local business development: sourcing and unlocking new businesses, factories, and workplaces for collection.
You'll be on the ground most days: setting up hardware, onboarding operators, checking footage quality, and fixing problems as they come up. We'll support you with hardware, training, and help moving partnerships forward.
What You'll Do

• Launch sites: Coordinate site schedules, hardware delivery and setup, operator onboarding, and the first days of collection at each new site.

• Keep collection running: Visit sites often, resolve practical issues quickly, and make sure footage meets our quality bar every day.

• Manage the workforce: Source, onboard, schedule, and manage the operators who wear the capture rigs and the coordinators who support them.

• Own permissions and consents: Coordinate required site permissions and participant consents with our team before recording begins.

• Manage hardware and logistics: Track inventory, charging, repairs, and movement of capture rigs across sites.

• Source new businesses: Identify factories, workshops, kitchens, warehouses, and other workplaces that fit our collection needs, and reach the people who can approve access.

• Unlock access: Use your network, referrals, cold outreach, and door-to-door visits to meet owners and operators, explain what we're doing, earn their trust, and work with the U.S. team on terms that turn interest into confirmed access.

What Success Looks Like

• New sites go live quickly and run reliably, with issues surfaced and resolved fast.

• Usable footage grows week over week at a quality and cost our customers trust.

• A trained local team and a practical India playbook, so new sites launch without starting from scratch.

• A growing pipeline of new businesses unlocked for collection, with responsive local partners.

• Clear coordination with the U.S. team.

Requirements

• 2+ years running field, city, supply, or fleet operations at a marketplace, gig-work, logistics, or data collection company.

• Experience building an operation locally from scratch, or as an early hire who set up processes that didn't exist before.

• Experience winning business or partnerships: sourcing new accounts, sites, or supply, and closing access with small and mid-sized business owners.

• Experience managing a frontline or distributed workforce: hiring, training, scheduling, and quality.

• Comfortable approaching business owners directly, visiting sites, handling objections, and following through.

• Resourceful and proactive: you can find a way to reach the right person and keep work moving without a detailed playbook.

• Organized enough to manage several sites, a workforce, and deployment details at the same time.

• Clear communication in English plus Kannada, Hindi, or Tamil.

• Willingness to spend substantial time in the field and travel within India as needed.

Nice to Have

• Experience with hardware deployments, wearables, or logistics.

• Experience at a company collecting egocentric, video, or AI training data, or at a gig-work platform.

• Existing relationships with business owners, industry groups, or local operators in Bengaluru or South India.