--- title: 'Data & Strategy Lead at Cartesia' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-strategy-lead-cartesia-san-francisco-akr6hnvzdaq2' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-08' --- # Data & Strategy Lead at Cartesia - **Company:** Cartesia - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-07-31 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cartesia/d28d806f-2e65-411d-bce6-24ac7088cbb9 ## Job description ## ABOUT CARTESIA Our mission is to architect AI that learns from and interacts with the world like humans do. We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences. We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI. ## About the Role The Data & Strategy Team reports directly to Cartesia's founders and shapes our models capabilities. We work alongside researchers to find where models break, through evals and direct customer conversations, and then fix them by sourcing high quality data. We're looking for people who bring technical depth, operational rigor, and high agency, who want to have a lot of impact. As a Data & Strategy Lead, you'll have broad ownership and autonomy to shape one of the most important inputs to frontier AI models. You'll work across research, product, and go-to-market teams, make decisions with incomplete information, and build new processes from the ground up. If you enjoy solving ambiguous problems, learning quickly, and creating leverage through systems, you'll thrive in this role. ## Your Impact - Partner tightly with research and modeling teams to find where models fail, through evals and direct customer conversations. - Design, source, and maintain the evals that define quality for our models. Ground them in observed customer failures, benchmark continuously against other systems, and turn the results into concrete data requirements. - Establish new sources of human data to advance model performance, building collection pipelines from scratch, and own data quality from acquisition through delivery. - Stay close to the research. Read papers, understand what datasets move which capabilities, and collaborate with the team on what data to collect next. - Be commercially minded. Engage with customers, enable the GTM team, and drive revenue growth. Principles for the role - Bias for action - Extreme ownership, low ego - Ability to operate in ambiguous environments - High standards and accountability - Bar raiser - Outcomes oriented - Winning mentality ## What You Bring - 3–10 years of experience in high-ownership roles (e.g., founder, GM, or strategy/ops at a startup). - Technical fluency with data and operations; SQL proficiency required. - Holds themselves and other to a high bar, bias to action, and strong attention to detail. - Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid pace. - Low-ego, collaborative, and mission-driven, focused on team and company success. ## Nice to Have - Experience in AI/ML data operations or large-scale operations - Background in audio, speech, or language-related workflows - Background in CS, industrial engineering, or similar. Note: Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire. ## MORE DETAILS 🏢 In-office policy: We’re an in-person team based out of offices in 🇺🇸 San Francisco, 🇬🇧 London and 🇮🇳 Bangalore. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day. 🌎 Visa sponsorship: We provide visa sponsorship support and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. However, visa sponsorship is dependent on many factors, including the role you are applying for, and the location you are going to be based, and so we can't always guarantee success. Your Recruiter will work with you to understand your visa sponsorship needs from the first call. 🚢 We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way. 🤝 We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed. ## OUR BENEFITS (US EMPLOYEES ONLY) 💰 Compensation Competitive base salary alongside attractive equity package. 🩺 Health Insurance Fully covered medical insurance along with dental and vision for you and your family. 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Parental Leave 9 weeks paternity & 12 weeks maternity leave 🏦 401(k) 🚆 Commuter Allowance A monthly stipend to help you get to and from the office. 🏖️ Flexible PTO Take as much time as you need to recharge your batteries. 🍲 Meals & Snacks Lunch, dinner and plenty of snacks, provided daily. 🦖 Your own personal Yoshi ## OUR COMMITMENT TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY Cartesia is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. ## About Cartesia ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Cartesia builds next-generation foundation models using state space models (SSMs) to deliver ubiquitous, interactive, real-time AI that runs wherever you are. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series A-II; total funding $191M) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Karan Goel (CEO), Albert Gu (Chief Scientist & Co-founder), Brandon Yang (Co-founder), Arjun Desai (Co-founder) ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Artificial Intelligence – foundation models, real-time voice AI, multimodal AI - **Target customers**: B2B – developers and enterprises building real-time AI applications in healthcare, robotics, gaming, customer service, localization, recruiting, finance, and more. - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Build the next generation of AI: ubiquitous, interactive intelligence that runs wherever you are.” ## Products & Services - **Sonic**: The world’s fastest generative voice API – a streaming text-to-speech API that supports laughter and emotion, designed for real-time voice agents (SaaS / API). - **Ink**: Likely a multimodal generation product (text-to-image or visual) – part of Cartesia’s broader SSM platform. - **Agents**: A framework or tool for building real-time AI agents using Cartesia’s foundation models. - **Core foundation models**: State-of-the-art SSM-based models for text, audio, video, images, and time-series data (research-backed platform). ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $191M - Seed Round (Dec 2024): $27M - Venture Round (Nov 2025): $100M - Series A (Mar 2025): $64M (latest round) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, NVIDIA, A* Capital, and more. - **Growth Signals**: - 88 employees with +6.5% monthly headcount growth - 34 active job postings (+17.2% monthly, +9.7% quarterly) - Website traffic up +73.2% year-over-year (380k monthly visits) - Team hails from Stanford, CMU, Meta, Scale AI, Cruise, and other top AI labs ## Competitive Advantages - **Pioneering SSM Architecture**: The founding team invented State Space Models (SSMs) at Stanford AI Lab – a subquadratic alternative to transformers that enables higher quality and far more efficient inference for real-time, multimodal AI. - **Speed & Efficiency**: Sonic (voice API) is marketed as the world’s fastest generative voice API, critical for latency-sensitive applications. - **World-class Backing**: Supported by top-tier VCs (Index, Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins) and NVIDIA, providing both capital and ecosystem access. - **Research‑to‑Product Pipeline**: Direct lineage from academic breakthroughs to production-grade APIs, giving them a deep technical moat. ## Strategic Focus - **Real‑time, Ubiquitous AI**: Expand from voice to broader multimodal capabilities, powering interactive AI that runs on edge and cloud. - **Vertical Expansion**: Target high‑value use cases in customer service, healthcare, gaming, robotics, and localization. - **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring across research, engineering, product, and go‑to‑market roles (34 current openings). - **Open‑source & Community**: Maintain a developer‑friendly stance with a Discord community and free trial of Sonic. ## Why Work Here - **Cutting‑edge AI Research**: Work alongside the original inventors of SSMs and contribute to foundational AI architecture. - **Fast‑growing Startup**: 88 employees with rapid headcount growth and significant funding – offers ownership and impact. - **Values‑driven Culture**: “Get the fundamentals right,” “Build to solve problems,” “Aim beyond what’s possible,” “Be honest,” “Have fun with it.” - **Remote‑flexible**: Presence across 5 countries (US, UK, India, South Korea, Switzerland) suggests a distributed team with flexible working arrangements. - **Engineering‑heavy**: 39% of staff in technical roles, 8% in research – strong emphasis on technical excellence. - **Notable Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but a high‑caliber team (Stanford, Meta, Scale AI) and top investor backing indicate competitive compensation and a vibrant startup environment. ## Sources 1. [cartesia.ai](https://cartesia.ai/company/) 2. [LinkedIn – Cartesia](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cartesia-ai) 3. [CB Insights – Cartesia](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/cartesia) 4. [Lightspeed Venture Partners – Cartesia](https://lsvp.com/company/cartesia/) 5. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com – Cartesia Careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cartesia) ## Other roles at Cartesia - [Executive Business Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-business-partner-cartesia-san-francisco-8qnsazrv2fbs) — San Francisco, CA - [Engineering Manager, Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-platform-cartesia-san-francisco-39bxn084hz1v) — San Francisco, CA - [Product & Research Operations Manager, Human Data](https://feeny.ai/job/product-research-operations-manager-human-data-cartesia-san-francisco-2gzfs95paf47) — San Francisco, CA - [Product and Research Operations Manager, Voices](https://feeny.ai/job/product-and-research-operations-manager-voices-cartesia-london-xzfw0584pk4z) — London, United Kingdom - [Scaled Customer Success Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/scaled-customer-success-manager-cartesia-san-francisco-pep0z5fhxpvf) — San Francisco, CA - [GTM Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-strategist-cartesia-san-francisco-2rgz6jgkx2bb) — San Francisco, CA - [Language Lead - Japanese (Contract)](https://feeny.ai/job/language-lead-japanese-contract-cartesia-remote-szv3dbs54aym) - [Language Lead - Hindi (Contract)](https://feeny.ai/job/language-lead-hindi-contract-cartesia-remote-jr4vqq3rm1gr) - [Language Lead - French (Contract)](https://feeny.ai/job/language-lead-french-contract-cartesia-remote-eyznnq25j1yg) - [Language Lead - English (Contract)](https://feeny.ai/job/language-lead-english-contract-cartesia-remote-qhpheefftmwy)