Strategic Project Lead

Company: Confidential - Seed-stage AI research startup
Location: San Francisco, CA (Dogpatch office, in person 5 days per week; relocation stipend available)
Compensation: $175,000 - $275,000 + 0.05% - 0.3% equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: H-1B transfers and new sponsorship (including OPT/new grad)

About the Company

A seed-stage startup that works with frontier AI labs to build reinforcement-learning environments and benchmarks that teach AI agents to do real financial-services work.

The Role

Our client is hiring Strategic Project Leads with 2+ years in investment banking, private equity, hedge funds or finance-focused consulting to drive account delivery for the frontier AI labs it serves. You will shape how the next generation of AI agents learns to do real finance work, acting as part delivery lead and part product manager, with outsized impact on a small team.

What You Will Do

• Own day-to-day delivery and quality of training environments shipped to frontier lab customers, including managing contractors and running experiments.
• Act as a lead product manager: form opinions on the product, work with engineers to ship features and drive the roadmap.
• Manage customer relationships: understand requirements, set expectations and ensure deliverables meet quality standards.
• Build operational systems, documentation, quality guardrails and scalable processes for rapid project cycles.
• Contribute to strategic and financial planning across pricing, revenue modeling and project economics.

What You Bring

• 2+ years as an analyst or associate in investment banking, private equity, hedge funds or finance-focused consulting (4-6 years is the sweet spot)
• Ability to explain the work you have done in depth
• Led project workstreams end to end and managed external stakeholders
• Startup exposure: startup operations, startup internships or starting a company
• A self-starter track record (side projects, a business, something meaningful you built)
• Active hands-on use of AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) with examples of what you built
• Ability to work full-time in person in San Francisco

Nice to Have

• Technical or CS degree
• Degree from a program that places into banking, consulting or PE

Benefits

Fully covered healthcare, free meals, gym membership, free transportation, $10k+ relocation stipend, 401(k) with 4% match, visa sponsorship.

Interview Process

Initial screen (30 min), second round (45-60 min), case study, case study presentation (full day).