Director, AI Data Acquisition and Operations

Location: Mountain View, United States. Employees living within 50 miles of a designated U.S. Microsoft office are expected to work from the office at least four days a week.

Salary: USD $130,900–$251,900 per year across the U.S.; USD $165,600–$272,300 per year in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City metropolitan area.

Company

Microsoft AI develops frontier AI models and related products at scale.

What you will do

• Lead post-training data collection, including human evaluations and training data programs.
• Select, negotiate with, and manage data vendors and related contracts.
• Serve as the primary data operations point of contact for research efforts focused on post-training.
• Track purchase orders, spending, amortization schedules, and milestone delivery across human-data vendors.
• Coordinate initiatives across Business Development, Procurement, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Engineering.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Business Administration or a related field plus 3+ years of relevant experience, or a bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Computer Science, or a related field plus 4+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent experience.
• Experience in strategy or finance, data operations, program or technical program management, procurement, or finance integration.
• Ability to lead large cross-functional programs and strategically manage AI data vendor relationships.
• Experience overseeing budgets, impact tracking systems, and cross-functional programs.
• Ability to work from the designated Microsoft office at least four days per week when located within the applicable distance of the office.

Nice to have

• Bachelor’s degree and 6+ years of experience in technical data operations, procurement program management, or finance systems integration.
• Experience managing data operations for AI research organizations and collaborating with scientists on data collection.
• Experience leading large-scale multimodal data programs for AI research organizations.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on frontier AI models and responsible AI development.
• Potential eligibility for benefits and additional compensation.
• Equal employment opportunity and reasonable accommodation support during the application process.