---
title: 'Strategic Project Lead at Contra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-project-lead-contra-san-francisco-8c987bhpvnms'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Strategic Project Lead at Contra

- **Company:** Contra
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$200k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/contra/1318fb3a-d8c9-4fbf-9a2e-6fd30cb98531

## Job description

## Who we are

Contra Labs is a human-centered research lab studying how creatives actually use AI, how tools can serve creative work better, and how to protect the originality that gets flattened as everything starts to look the same. We connect a global network of top creative talent with frontier AI labs and product companies. By grounding our research in real creative workflows, we help define what "good" looks like across design, video, imagery, and beyond. Our work powers benchmarking, evaluation, and post-training for leading models and applications. Built on Contra, the professional network for independent creatives, we turn human judgment into the training and evaluation layer that helps these tools serve the people who use them.

## Why this role exists

We are scaling across client engagements: post-training dataset creation, benchmarking programs, and ongoing evaluation partnerships. Each project spans a different mix of AI labs, creative-tool companies, and research teams, with different requirements, timelines, and quality bars. We need someone to own this work from end to end. Think of yourself as the operator for a project or vertical. You sit between three groups that do not naturally talk to each other: the client who needs the data, the creative experts producing it, and the internal engineering team building the tooling. Your job is to make all three feel like they are working on the same thing, and to ship results that are both rigorous and genuinely useful.

## What you'll own

- The methodology. Annotation protocols, rubrics, and evaluation designs for creative and multimodal outputs.
- Delivery. Scope, evaluator staffing, quality routing, timelines, and the client relationship, from kickoff to final readout.
- Quality. Data quality, inter-rater reliability, and real-time course correction when something feels off. You hold the bar, and you hold the levers to fix it.
- Analysis and storytelling. Qualitative and quantitative analysis turned into clear findings, recommendations, reports, and workshops that clients act on.
- The systems behind it. You turn repeated work into clean, measurable process, and you partner with engineering on the tooling that makes that process faster and more reliable.
- The narrative. Case studies and benchmark publications that sharpen how Contra Labs is understood in the market.

## About you

- You design studies for a living. You can scope a question, run the study, analyze the data, and translate it into a direction people can act on.
- You understand good creative, and you can explain it. You recognize creative quality and can say why, and you can tell the difference between personal preference and something closer to ground truth. You build frameworks that capture that signal faithfully.
- You care more about people than about technology for its own sake. You understand how humans judge creative work and design systems around that.
- You turn messy work into machines. You make process clear, predictable, and measurable, and you run a tight ship across several projects at once.
- High ownership, low ego, bias to action. You ship a v1, learn, and do what it takes to deliver.

## Experience

- 3+ years designing studies, running evaluations, analyzing data, and presenting findings.
- Experience with data labeling, annotation, human-in-the-loop systems, or AI and ML evaluation workflows.
- A track record managing several concurrent projects, including annotation, evaluation, or QA work.
- A real point of view on creative quality and what "good" looks like.

Bonus

- A strong research background, qualitative and quantitative. A Master's or PhD in HCI, cognitive science, psychology, design research, or a related field is a plus, and so is equivalent depth from industry.
- Statistical methods for evaluation work: inter-rater reliability, sampling, regression, significance testing.
- RLHF, LLM evaluation, or benchmark design.
- Ethnography, UX research, or design-study methods.
- Startup or 0-to-1 experience.

## Requirements

- Based in San Francisco, California

Total comp

- Salary: $150,000 to $200,000 USD plus equity
- Medical, dental, vision
- 401k matching
- Company laptop on your start date

Interview process

- Recruiting team (20 minutes)
- CEO and co-founder (30 minutes)
- Technical interview, research and methods focus (45 minutes)
- VP of Product (45 minutes)
- Paid case study and presentation (60 minutes)

Note: Contra communicates with applicants through [contra.com](http://contra.com) domains only. We never ask candidates for money. For current postings, visit Contra Careers.

## About Contra

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Contra is a commission-free professional network and freelance platform that connects independent creatives and digital professionals with clients and companies for project-based work.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Not publicly listed on primary sources; the company was started by a team of independents.

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Freelance marketplace, professional networking, HR tech / future of work
- **Target customers**: B2B (companies and agencies hiring freelancers) and B2C (independent freelancers, creatives, and digital professionals)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "A professional network for the jobs and skills of the future." The company is "proudly an independent-first community empowering a new way to work" and believes "remote-first culture, freedom from the 9-5, and a global team is the best way to work." [contra.com](https://contra.com/mission)

## Products & Services
- **Contra Platform (Core Marketplace)**: A commission-free freelance marketplace where independents create profiles, get discovered by clients, and manage projects. Clients pay a flat $29/month per contractor or $29 per project contract fee, while freelancers keep 100% of their earnings. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
- **Contra Pro**: A premium subscription ($29/month) for freelancers offering portfolio customizations, branding tools, and advanced analytics. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
- **Contra for Agencies**: A dedicated offering for agencies to manage freelance talent and projects on the platform. [contra.com](https://contra.com/)
- **Payments & Contracts**: Built-in tools for signing contracts, invoicing, and processing commission-free payments, providing an all-in-one workflow for freelance projects. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$45.24 million** across 4 rounds (Seed, Series A, Series B, and a 2025 Venture Round). [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: New Enterprise Associates (led Series B), Unusual Ventures (led Series A). [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - Over **$250 million** in total projects facilitated on the platform. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
    - **1.5 million+** independent experts on the platform. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
    - **50,000+** teams trust the platform. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
    - Headcount grew **72% year-over-year** to 421 employees. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
    - Active job postings grew **133% year-over-year**. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
    - LinkedIn followers grew **45.3% year-over-year** to over 61,000. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Commission-Free Model**: Unlike competitors (e.g., Upwork, Fiverr) that take a percentage of freelancer earnings, Contra allows independents to keep 100% of what they earn, charging clients a flat fee instead. This is a major differentiator and value proposition for talent. [contra.com](https://contra.com/)
- **All-in-One Workflow**: The platform integrates discovery, contracts, payments, and project management into a single workspace, reducing friction for both freelancers and clients. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
- **Vetted Client Base**: Clients are vetted by Contra, ensuring freelancers work with high-quality, legitimate companies and agencies. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
- **Built by Independents**: The company was founded by freelancers who understood the pain points of existing networks, giving them deep empathy for their core user base. [contra.com](https://contra.com/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Global Talent Expansion**: With a workforce spread across 53 countries and a 72% headcount growth rate, Contra is aggressively building a global, remote-first team. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
- **Platform Growth**: Scaling the marketplace by attracting more clients and freelancers, evidenced by a 133% year-over-year increase in job postings. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
- **Product Development**: Continuing to build out the all-in-one workflow for contract work, including payments, contracts, and project management features. [contra.com](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
- **Community Building**: Fostering a global community of independents, with a strong emphasis on design and creative talent (172 employees in Design roles). [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)

## Why Work Here
- **Flexible-first culture**: The company explicitly champions remote-first work and freedom from the traditional 9-5, which is core to its product and internal culture. [contra.com](https://contra.com/careers)
- **Global & Distributed Team**: Employees are located across 53 countries, with significant talent hubs in the US, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and Canada. This offers a truly global work environment. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)
- **Competitive Compensation**: Offers competitive base salaries, pre-IPO stock options, and 100% health coverage for US and Canada full-time employees, plus monthly health reimbursements for international contractors. [contra.com](https://contra.com/careers)
- **Generous Time Off**: 15 paid vacation days, 10 company holidays, 7 flex days, and a full week off at the end of the year. [contra.com](https://contra.com/careers)
- **No Meeting Wednesdays**: A dedicated day each week with no internal meetings to allow for deep, focused work. [contra.com](https://contra.com/careers)
- **Wellness & Equipment**: Reimbursements for home office equipment and other needs to do your best work. [contra.com](https://contra.com/careers)
- **High-Growth Environment**: With 72% annual headcount growth and a global team spanning 53 countries, the company offers a dynamic, fast-paced work environment with significant career growth potential. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)

## Sources
1. [contra.com - Careers Page](https://contra.com/careers)
2. [contra.com - Mission Page](https://contra.com/mission)
3. [contra.com - Homepage](https://contra.com/)
4. [contra.com - Features / Find Freelance Jobs](https://contra.com/features/find-freelance-jobs)
5. [linkedin.com - Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/contrahq)

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