---
title: 'AI Advisory Principal at Scale AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-advisory-principal-scale-ai-san-francisco-63fb2vmtz7k4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# AI Advisory Principal at Scale AI

- **Company:** Scale AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA / New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $207k–$259k
- **Posted:** 2026-07-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scaleai/jobs/4715976005

## Job description

Scale AI's Advisory practice is the most forward-leaning bet in our go-to-market motion. We're not waiting for clients to hand us a scope — we get in front of the decision, shape the right AI problems before a build begins, and make Scale the obvious partner for what comes next.

Advisory is the structured answer to the question enterprises are already asking us: "What should we build, and where do we start?" It's a discovery and scoping phase that runs before delivery — designed to land bigger contracts, drive more predictable execution, and accelerate expansion. By 2027, it will be Scale's default first engagement with new enterprise clients.

As an AI Advisory Principal, you lead Scale's Advisory work in your vertical, end-to-end. In pre-sales, you shape and qualify opportunities alongside Account Executives and sell the Advisory phase to clients. In delivery, you're the Directly Responsible Individual on engagements — owning the client relationship, running the discovery and scoping work, and accountable for the outcome. Underpinning both, you build out the vertical point of view — the industry and AI expertise that makes Advisory credible — and, as one of the function's first hires, help build the Advisory motion itself. This is a hands-on role: you do the advisory work, not just manage it.

## What You'll Own

You own the engagement and the vertical — from the first pre-sales conversation through the final readout.

- Lead engagements end-to-end. You're the Directly Responsible Individual on engagements — owning the client relationship, running workshops, leading the final readout, driving the direction, and accountable for the outcome (use-case selection, SOW quality, delivery). You coordinate and direct the Solutions Engineers, Designers, Tech Leads, and DSGs on the engagement without managing them directly.
- Sell Advisory in your vertical. You build the approach, lead the Advisory portion of key pre-sales meetings, bring industry roadmap examples from buyer peers, and qualify opportunities with Account Executives — and you represent Scale and Advisory at industry events.
- Build the vertical point of view. You develop your vertical's point of view — the AI-shaped problems, best practices, technology and learnings, and buyer-peer and competitor intelligence that make Advisory credible in the field.
- Grow the playbook from the field. You surface what's working and what isn't across your engagements, document the patterns and reusable approaches, and work with DSGs to update the Advisory approach based on build feedback.
- Manage your Consultant. You manage the Consultant on your engagements and overall — coaching them, giving feedback, and owning their professional development — and you provide input on Consultant hiring.

## Qualifications

Ideally, you’d have

- Senior manager or principal equivalent experience at a Tier 1 firm (McKinsey, Bain, BCG ideally); 7+ years of work experience. AI strategy or transformation experience strongly preferred.
- Scoping, proposal, and pitching experience — comfortable shaping and selling an engagement, not just delivering it.
- The judgment to advise clients directly on where AI creates value — identifying and shaping the right, AI-shaped use cases for their business.
- The technical credibility to speak to AI builds credibility and to work closely with Solutions Engineers on feasibility.
- A classic consulting toolkit e.g. strategy, operating-model, governance, change management, and exec-ready storytelling to assist clients in developing an AI strategy
- Experience designing and facilitating client workshops.
- A natural relationship-builder who establishes trusted-advisor credibility early, paired with the judgment to own outcomes independently.
- Strategic but hands-on: able to think at the level of a client's AI agenda and still get into the day-to-day work of an engagement.
- Willingness to travel 30-60 percent, which can include international trips depending on the account.

## Nice to Have

- Deep expertise in at least one enterprise vertical  (Consumer, Financial & Professional Services, Healthcare & Life Sciences) — the industry depth to be credible with senior stakeholders.
- 0-to1 experience developing or deploying GenAI applications in an enterprise setting.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is: $207,200—$259,000 USD

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's [Know Your Rights poster](https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights6.12ScreenRdr.pdf) for additional information.

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

PLEASE NOTE: We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants’ needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal data. Please see our [privacy policy](https://scale.com/legal/privacy) for additional information.

## About Scale AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Scale AI provides high-quality data, RLHF, model evaluations, and full-stack AI infrastructure to help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee reliable AI systems.
- **Entity Type**: Private (49% non‑voting stake owned by Meta Platforms as of June 2025; total funding $1.6B across eight rounds)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Alexandr Wang, Lucy Guo (Wang left in June 2025; current CEO is Jason Droege)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI infrastructure, data annotation, large language model (LLM) evaluation, enterprise AI deployment
- **Target customers**: B2B – Enterprise and government organizations; also serves leading AI labs (e.g., OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Microsoft, General Motors)
- **Mission**: “Develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions.”

## Products & Services
- **Data at Scale**: High-quality training data, annotations, and RLHF for advanced AI models (SaaS + human-in-the-loop service)
- **Evaluations**: Rigorous model evaluations, benchmarking, and red‑teaming to measure and improve AI performance (service)
- **Applied AI**: Full‑stack AI systems that help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee reliable AI (SaaS + consulting)
- **Safety, Evaluation and Alignment Lab**: Research arm focused on LLM alignment and safety (internal R&D; also co‑created the “Humanity's Last Exam” benchmark)
- **Subsidiaries**: Remotasks (computer vision and autonomous vehicle data labeling), Outlier (LLM data annotation)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $29B (as of 2025 – cited on scale.com)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $1.6B (including the $14B Meta investment that acquired a 49% non‑voting stake in June 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Meta Platforms (49% owner), with commercial customers including Google, Microsoft, Meta, General Motors, OpenAI, and Time. Also works with U.S. and Qatari governments.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: Scale.com cites “1,000+” employees; LinkedIn reports 3,751 employees (+32.1% YoY).
  - 90% of the world’s leading generative AI model builders are powered by Scale.
  - 15 billion human decisions used to train AI models; $1 billion paid to contributors globally.
  - Active job postings: 284+ (as of July 2025), with strong hiring in enterprise engineering, AI agents, and solutions roles.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Data moat**: Scale’s proprietary Data Engine and access to millions of human‑annotated decisions create high‑quality training data that competitors cannot easily replicate.
- **Trust & adoption**: Used by 90% of leading GenAI builders; runs private benchmarks for the most ambitious AI companies.
- **Government credibility**: Direct contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and international governments (e.g., Qatar) – a high‑barrier entry point.
- **Full‑stack offering**: From raw data annotation to LLM evaluation and end‑to‑end applied AI deployment, Scale covers the entire AI lifecycle.
- **Research leadership**: In‑house Safety, Evaluation and Alignment Lab; co‑creator of the “Humanity's Last Exam” benchmark.

## Strategic Focus
- **Enterprise GenAI agents**: Ramping up “AgentOps” and “Frontier Agents” engineering teams (many open roles in SF, NY, London, Budapest).
- **Healthcare & life sciences**: Hiring dedicated GTM leaders and AI strategists for healthcare vertical.
- **International expansion**: Growing offices in London, Budapest, Mexico City, and Washington DC.
- **Safety and alignment**: Continued investment in red‑teaming, model evaluations, and government‑focused AI safety contracts.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission‑driven**: “Develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions” – directly shaping frontier AI capabilities.
- **Compensation & benefits**: Comprehensive health, dental, vision, mental health services; generous PTO; annual learning & development stipend; parental leave; ERGs; guest‑friendly offices with happy hours, game nights, book clubs.
- **Engineering culture**: Credos such as “Write the Market,” “Find the 20%,” “Earn Customer Love,” and “Quality is Our Cheat Code” emphasize impact over effort, customer obsession, and structured thinking.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapid headcount growth (+32%), major Meta investment, and expansion into new verticals signal a company in high‑growth mode.
- **Flexible work**: Offices in SF, NY, London, Budapest, Mexico City, DC; the careers page highlights “flexible environment,” though specific remote/hybrid policy is not explicitly stated.

## Sources
1. [scale.com](https://scale.com/about)
2. [scale.com](https://scale.com/)
3. [scale.com/careers](https://scale.com/careers)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scaleai)
5. [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scaleai)

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