Strategic Project Lead, Manager

About the Role

The Strategic Project Lead, Manager leads and grows the team of Strategic Project Leads (SPLs) who run the day-to-day execution of our customer data projects. SPLs own the operational core of each project — setup, bringing data trainers on, throughput and fulfillment tracking, project margin, payment tiers, running projects through their gates, and keeping Airtable current as the system of record. The Strategic Project Lead, Manager owns the people who do that work: their craft, their growth, and how they're deployed across the portfolio.

This role sits at the intersection of people leadership, operational rigor, and financial discipline. It's a player-coach role: the SPL Manager must understand project operations well enough to coach on setup and tracking, pressure-test delivery plans, and judge where throughput, margin, or quality is at risk before it becomes a delivery issue.

The SPL Manager reports to the Services lead and partners closely with the FDE Manager, Deployment Leads, and General Managers. Because SPLs aren't bound to a single domain and any project with a significant number of data trainers needs one, a core part of the role is owning the staffing cadence — allocating SPLs across a shifting portfolio and reconciling project demand against capacity so every project is staffed and running well.

This role is equivalent in seniority to a Deployment Lead, with a stronger emphasis on managing the SPL team and the operational engine rather than direct customer ownership. The SPL Manager is also the steward of the SPL career path — SPL to SPL 2 to SPL Manager, with a branch to Deployment Lead and, in time, toward General Manager.

What You'll Do

• Lead the SPL team end-to-end: hire, coach, manage performance, and develop careers across the SPL track and toward Deployment Lead or GM.
• Own the weekly staffing cadence and the shared capacity view: allocate SPLs across the portfolio, balance capacity against where the work is, and ensure every project with a meaningful number of data trainers and an SPL — partnering with the FDE Manager, who commits FDE supply into the same cadence.
• Set and uphold the operational bar: clean project setup, accurate tracking, disciplined Airtable hygiene, projects run through their gates (calibration before scaling, staged ramp, delivery acceptance), and reliable throughput, quality, and delivery.
• Own the operational-financial bar across the team — margin visibility, AR/billing hygiene, and payment-tier management — and coach SPLs to manage it well; account-level margin ownership sits with the Deployment Leads.
• Own SPL onboarding and the bar that certifies an SPL as ready to run projects solo: the ~2-week boot camp, including the tooling deep-dives (payment tiers, internal/external tracking, Airtable, Growth) and the initial exercise (set up a fake project end-to-end using the add–data-trainer tools, across different project types).
• Ensure SPLs keep the FDE and FDR connected at project kickoff, and that they orchestrate the data-trainer workforce through Pod Leads on complex projects.
• Partner with the FDE Manager, Deployment Leads, and GMs on staffing, delivery, and alignment with customer objectives.
• Establish operating cadences, dashboards, and escalation paths that create visibility and accountability across the portfolio.
• Step in on escalations when throughput, margin, quality, or a delivery timeline is at risk.
• Build the repeatable processes, templates, and playbooks that make the SPL function more efficient as the organization scales.

What You'll Own

• The capability and operational bar of the SPL team.
• Every active project appropriately staffed — the staffing cadence and capacity view kept current.
• Portfolio-wide visibility into throughput, margin, and delivery risk.
• How quickly and consistently new SPLs reach a solo-ready standard, and a growing bench of SPLs developing toward Deployment Lead.

What We're Looking For

• Significant experience managing operational or delivery teams, or a strong SPL/program-management background and readiness to manage as a hands-on, player-coach.
• Strong operational and financial fluency: comfort with throughput metrics, margin, billing/AR, and systems of record such as Airtable.
• Excellent judgment in distinguishing operational issues from staffing issues from delivery issues, and determining the right path to resolution.
• A track record of developing people and giving direct, useful feedback.
• A high bar for execution paired with the ability to deliver against ambitious timelines.
• The ability to manage many concurrent projects and people without losing attention to detail.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-scaling environments where processes are still being built.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with AI, machine learning, data pipelines, RLHF, or data-labeling/annotation operations.
• Experience managing contractor or contingent workforces at scale.
• Experience owning margin, billing, or financial tracking across a portfolio of projects.
• Experience building onboarding programs and repeatable operating systems for a rapidly scaling organization.

What Success Looks Like

In your first several months, you'll take ownership of the SPL team, get every active project appropriately staffed, and raise the bar on project setup, tracking, and Airtable hygiene. You'll get SPL onboarding running smoothly — with new SPLs reaching a solo-ready standard faster — build strong working relationships with the FDE Manager, Deployment Leads, and GMs, and establish clear visibility into throughput, margin, and delivery risk across the portfolio.

Over time, you'll define how the SPL function operates at scale, develop SPLs into Deployment Leads and future leaders, and build the playbooks and operating systems that keep the engine running as the organization grows.