Strategic Project Lead – Growth & Operations

Company Snapshot

• Datacurve – creates high quality data for foundation model labs through a gamified platform called Shipd, with a current focus strongly on coding data. has scaled from 0 to near 8 figures in annualized run rate in less than 1 year with a 5 people team with a 80-90% profit margin (2-3x above industry average). They recently raised $15m at a $150m valuation Series A (unannounced), doubling the team to 10 people in the past 1-2 months. Notable investors: Y Combinator, VP of Research at Google Deepmind, researchers at Anthropic, OpenAI, CEO of Vercel, Replit, Cohere, and Redis.
• shipd.ai – We turn data‑creation tasks into paid bounties on our platform. For contracts at scale, we run “quests” on the platform, allowing contributors to solve and win bounties. We support shorter projects by managing contractors. We’re seeking a Growth person to scale out both users/contributors and contractors.

Why Join Us?

• Play a pivotal role in building the infrastructure that powers the next generation of AI
• Own strategy and execution in one of the company’s most critical growth areas
• Work alongside experienced founders, operators, and technologists
• Join a mission-driven team in a fast-moving, high-impact environment

Your Mission

Develop and own the strategy and execution to grow our contributor pool from 16,000 to 100,000+, with a focus on acquiring and activating vetted expert contributors (e.g., coders). At the same time, you’ll set up systems to outreach, track, manage, and retain high-performing contractors, ensuring we’re ready to meet demand across technical and specialized annotation projects.

What You’ll Do

Growth & Contributor Acquisition

• Design and execute multi-channel acquisition campaigns targeting expert contributors across technical and specialized domains
• Develop creative acquisition loops such as coding challenges, referral programs, university outreach, and content-based community growth
• Engage relevant communities via Discord, Slack, newsletters, and niche forums
• Launch and optimize paid advertising campaigns on platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, and X
• Create resonant content to drive engagement and conversion, including email drips, thought leadership pieces, and UGC initiatives
• Build and own the entire contributor funnel from sourcing to onboarding
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to enhance contributor tooling and onboarding flows

Funnel Ownership & Experimentation

• Own and improve funnel metrics including conversion rates, CAC, onboarding time, and contributor retention
• Implement robust measurement frameworks using A/B testing, cohort analysis, and attribution tracking
• Drive iterative improvements across outreach strategies and content performance
• Forecast supply-side contributor growth in alignment with operational and product needs

Operational Systems & Retention

• Develop and implement contributor management systems for vetting, availability tracking, and workflow matching
• Build infrastructure to manage and optimize contributor utilization across projects
• Partner with Operations to define and enforce quality standards and training systems
• Implement contributor engagement and retention mechanisms to reduce churn and improve performance visibility

Qualifications

Must-Haves

• 2–3+ years of experience in growth, strategy, or operations roles in fast-paced, high-autonomy environments (e.g., startups, talent platforms, marketplaces)
• Demonstrated success in scaling contributor bases or user communities using creative, data-driven methods
• Strong understanding of marketing funnels, performance metrics, and campaign experimentation (A/B testing, cohort analysis, etc.)
• Excellent cross-functional project management and communication skills
• Bias for action with a track record of delivering measurable impact

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience building contributor acquisition or talent-sourcing pipelines
• Exposure to the AI/ML ecosystem, data labeling, or human-in-the-loop systems
• Technical background or familiarity with coding workflows and contributors
• Experience managing distributed or global expert networks