Data Operations Engineer
Specter
San Francisco, CA · Posted May 20, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
See every open role at Specter
More in California job market · Healthcare & Hospital Systems · Data & Analytics jobs
More roles at Specter
- RF Systems Engineer · San Francisco, CA
- Founding Deployment Strategist · San Francisco, CA
- Software Engineer — Fleet · San Francisco, CA
- Engineering Lab Manager · San Francisco, CA
- Hardware Test Engineer · San Francisco, CA
- Account Executive · San Francisco, CA
Similar jobs
- Partner 16, Data Engineer - Global Partnerships · Andreessen Horowitz · Menlo Park, CA
- Systems Administrator II - COMSEC · Jt4 · Edwards AFB, CA
- Systems Administrator - China Lake CA · Jt4 · Ridgecrest, CA
- Quality Systems Administrator · Heico · Clovis, CA
- Business Systems Administrator · University Of California San Francisco Foundation · San Francisco, CA
- Systems Administrator — Multiple Levels · Noblis · San Diego, CA
Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
- Best cities for data and analytics jobs #1 New York (1,713 openings)
- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
- Most requested AI skills in data and analytics jobs #1 Machine learning engineering (17.1%)
- AI tools named most often in data and analytics jobs #1 Databricks (7.6%)
- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
Data & Analytics jobs · Top Data & Analytics employers · All rankings
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among database administrators, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for database administrators: 33% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.
About the job
Company Background: Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world.
Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.
Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.
Role:
Specter is hiring a data operations engineer to build our research data operation. This individual will own the full pipeline from defining what data we need, to getting it labeled at high quality, to ensuring it meets the needs of our research team and ultimately improves our models. The role sits at the intersection of engineering and research, with a focus on building systems and tooling.
Responsibilities:
- Own the end-to-end relationship with our data labeling provider, including task scoping, timeline management, and issue resolution
- Build and maintain internal tooling for labelers, including annotation interfaces, task pipelines, and dataset browsers
- Define and enforce quality control standards across all labeled data, implementing automated checks and audit workflows
- Partner with researchers to translate perception model needs into data collection strategies, identifying gaps in coverage across object types, scenes, lighting conditions, and sensor modalities
- Build dashboards and metrics to monitor dataset diversity, class balance, and domain coverage
- Close the loop on the data flywheel: track how labeled data flows into training, surface failure modes, and drive iteration on the pipeline from collection through to model improvement
- Evaluate and integrate new data sources
- Define labeling taxonomies and annotation specifications
Qualifications:
- 1-3+ years of experience in data operations, project management, or a technical coordination role, ideally supporting ML or engineering teams
- Proficiency in Python and comfort building lightweight tools, scripts, and dashboards
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience managing external vendors or cross-functional stakeholders
- Familiarity with ML workflows and how training data impacts model performance
- Highly organized, with a track record of managing multiple concurrent workstreams
- Self-directed and autonomous
- Bonus: experience with computer vision data, annotation platforms, or labeling operations