---
title: 'Director of Finance at HumanSignal'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-finance-humansignal-san-francisco-xh87dx80yq53'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# Director of Finance at HumanSignal

- **Company:** HumanSignal
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-04-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/humansignal/jobs/4625038004

## Job description

## About HumanSignal

Real-world data is the competitive edge in AI.

HumanSignal is a human data partner for companies building AI models and products. Our customers ship better AI, faster, because we partner with their researchers from real-world data creation to annotation to delivery.

We design and create datasets from scratch, recruit and manage the domain experts who evaluate model output, and run everything through our own platform, Label Studio, the open-source standard for data labeling and evaluation, used by over 1 million practitioners worldwide.

We specialize in the operationally complex: real-world data collection, multimodal pipelines, and multi-step workflows. Advanced ML and AI teams use our enterprise platform to run their own data factories, and our services team to extend their reach where in-house capacity runs out.

If you want to do work that materially shapes how the next generation of AI products gets built, we'd love to talk.

## About the Role

We’re hiring a Director of Finance to own the financial backbone of HumanSignal, the company behind Label Studio. Reporting directly to the CEO, you’ll own financial planning, business analytics, and the metrics infrastructure that drives decision-making across the company,  including our SaaS & labeling services business.

This is a hands-on leadership role with broad scope. You’ll partner with the executive team on strategy and planning, work cross-functionally with product, marketing, and sales, and build the financial infrastructure we need for the next stage of growth. If you’re energized by ownership, building from scratch, and operating at the intersection of strategy and execution, this is your role.

## What You’ll Own

Financial Planning & Analysis

- Own the full P&L and free cash flow forecast; build and maintain our long-range financial model
- Lead the annual and quarterly planning cycle, including budgets, variance analysis, and ad-hoc modeling
- Deliver weekly KPI reporting to the executive team and board/investor reporting packages

Revenue & Deal Operations

- Run deal desk operations in partnership with Sales and Customer Success to ensure coherent deal structure and pricing
- Build and manage sales commission and incentive plans
- Develop, align, and drive accountability around company-wide KPIs

Labeling Services Metrics & Economics

- Own the financial model for our labeling services business, including project-level profitability, utilization, and margin analysis
- Partner with services leadership to develop pricing models, capacity planning, and resource forecasting
- Track and report on services revenue, backlog, and pipeline as a distinct business line alongside software ARR

Board & Strategic Support

- Own end-to-end board meeting preparation, including deck creation, data packages, and follow-ups
- Partner with leadership on strategic initiatives, business cases, and scenario planning
- Serve as primary liaison to external accounting, tax, and payroll services

## What You’ll Bring

- 5+ years in an FP&A, finance, or business analytics role at a high-growth startup, or relevant experience in management consulting
- Experience building financial infrastructure largely from scratch, you’re comfortable being the first dedicated finance hire
- Strong command of SaaS metrics: ARR, NDR, CAC payback, gross margin
- Experience with services or professional services financial modeling (utilization, project margins, blended rates) is a strong plus
- Highly analytical with advanced modeling skills
- Experience preparing board materials, investor updates, and executive-level reporting
- Ability to build a case and tell a persuasive story that drives decision-making across the organization
- Self-starter who can own complex projects end-to-end with minimal direction
- Startup mentality, no job is too small, and you default to action over analysis
- You’re familiar and utilizing all of the latest AI tooling and support to make yourself more efficient
- Attention to detail. In your application, tell us about a financial model you built that turned out to be wrong, and what it taught you. We read every application and want to make sure you do the same.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 Days

- Own the financial model, take over the P&L and FCF forecast and identify gaps or errors
- Deliver your first board data package with minimal hand-holding
- Produce an initial labeling services P&L with project-level margin visibility
- Audit external accounting and payroll vendors; present a recommendation on any changes

First 90 Days

- Own the full board prep process end-to-end, including the deck, data, and follow-ups
- Ship a company-wide KPI framework with named owners, targets, and a weekly reporting cadence
- Work alongside product to create pricing structure for new product / add-ons
- Deliver a revised deal desk process with documented pricing guardrails and approval workflows

First 6 Months

- Rebuild the long-range financial model to support scenario planning across software and services
- Execute at least two pricing or cost optimization initiative with measurable impact
- Be the person leadership relies on for any financial question, no one should need to go elsewhere

## About HumanSignal

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: HumanSignal provides an open-source and enterprise data labeling platform that enables AI teams to build high-quality datasets, evaluate models, and scale human judgment for machine learning.
- **Entity Type**: Private (startup; $30M total funding raised from venture investors)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Not publicly named on the website, but described as a team of Data Scientists and ML Engineers who met on a Himalayan expedition.

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Data labeling, AI training data, machine learning operations (MLOps), data-centric AI infrastructure.
- Target customers: B2B – data science teams at enterprises, AI startups, and organizations building custom ML/AI models (e.g., Bombora, Zendesk, Outreach, Trivago, Wyze).
- Mission: “To advance data-centric AI” and “help data scientists use data to teach ML/AI models how to make the best predictions.”

## Products & Services
- **[Label Studio (Open Source)](https://humansignal.com/)**: The most popular open-source data labeling platform, used by over 1,000,000 AI practitioners. Supports annotation of text, images, audio, video, 3D sensor data, and more. Available as a community edition.
- **[Label Studio Enterprise](https://humansignal.com/)**: A commercial SaaS/on-prem version with enhanced security, automation, quality review workflows, performance reporting, and integrations. Designed for production ML/AI teams.
- **[Data Services (Human-in-the-Loop)](https://humansignal.com/)**: Managed labeling, evaluation, red teaming, fine-tuning, and custom benchmark creation. HumanSignal’s expert annotators and project managers partner with teams to deliver high-quality datasets.
- **AI-assisted annotation & evaluation**: Tools for auto-labeling, LLM evaluation, RAG optimization, prompt engineering, and continuous model validation.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$30 million** (raised from proven investors as of 2025).
- **Notable Investors**: Redpoint Ventures, Unusual Ventures, Bow Capital, Swift Ventures.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew **83.7% YoY** to ~72 employees; operates in 18 countries.
  - Label Studio community: **250,000+ users** and **20,000+ GitHub stars**.
  - Over **100 million pieces of data** annotated by the community.
  - Acquired **Erud AI** in November 2025 to launch multimodal data services.
  - Label Studio Enterprise now available in AWS Marketplace (December 2025).
  - Customers include Bombora, Geberit, Outreach, Trivago, Zendesk, Wyze.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open-source dominance**: Label Studio is the most widely adopted open-source data labeling tool, giving HumanSignal a massive community, low barrier to entry, and built-in trust.
- **Data-centric AI philosophy**: Differentiates by emphasizing domain experts and internal teams owning the labeling process, reducing bias, and integrating human judgment at scale.
- **Flexible deployment**: Cloud or on-premises, with deep integration capabilities via APIs and agent skills.
- **End-to-end services**: From labeling to evaluation, red teaming, and fine-tuning – a single vendor for the full human-in-the-loop pipeline.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue expanding the Label Studio open-source ecosystem and enterprise adoption.
- Grow multimodal data services (text, image, video, 3D, audio) – acquisition of Erud AI signals this priority.
- Build internal data factories for customers who prefer to run their own labeling operations.
- Strengthen integrations with major ML/AI platforms and cloud marketplaces (e.g., AWS).
- Secure enterprise customers in regulated industries (on-prem capability).

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first culture**: Distributed team across North America, Europe, and South America; annual team offsites (virtual and in-person).
- **Inclusive environment**: Emphasis on authenticity, diversity, and psychological safety.
- **Competitive compensation**: Salary + equity ownership in a venture-backed startup.
- **Time off**: Generous vacation package, recognition of local holidays.
- **Growth opportunities**: Fast-growing company (83% headcount increase) with roles in Engineering, Data Services, and Operations.
- **Impact**: Work on one of the most critical infrastructure layers for AI/ML, with a strong open-source community.
- **Current openings (as of mid-2026)**: Senior Backend, Frontend, Full Stack Engineers (remote); Delivery Leads, AI Trainers, Operations roles.

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

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