Data Scientist, Marketplace Incentives

About the role

About Build AI

Build AI is the data hyperscaler for Physical AI. We co-design hardware, collection, infrastructure, and research to scale the physical labor dataset orders of magnitude faster than anyone in the world.

Job Summary

This role exists to hillclimb the Head of Dataset & Quality’s objective. They define the ideal dataset, the objective function, the taxonomy, and the value of incremental data. You take that objective and maximize it: incentives, marketplace design, and collection behavior so the next hour we collect actually moves the score.

Key Responsibilities

Treat the Dataset & Quality objective / value function as the thing you optimize — not raw hours, not vanity volume

Design marketplace mechanics (task mix, targeting, bonuses, payouts, eligibility) so collectors produce high-value data

Run experiments: treatment assignment, holdouts, pay and bonus tests; keep the ones that hillclimb the objective and kill the rest

Measure whether incremental collection is improving the dataset under the value function, and report that in language ops can act on

Work with software to ship incentive and payout changes into the collection product (not a spreadsheet that never lands)

Watch for Goodhart: collectors optimizing the proxy instead of the objective, and close those holes

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

Quantitative: you can take someone else’s objective function and optimize against it

Comfortable designing and reading experiments (assignment, holdouts, power, leakage)

Comfortable with messy field / collection data

You like iteration: small changes, measured against the objective, shipped again

Strong candidates may also have experience with (Nice-to-have qualifications)

Experience with marketplaces, incentives, pricing, or growth experimentation (gig, two-sided, or similar)

Experience with payouts, bonuses, or pay systems that moved real money

You have shipped experiment results into a product, not only a notebook

Benefits

Competitive pay

Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

$500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office

Relocation support for those moving to San Francisco (Financial District) or Shenzhen (Nanshan)

Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

Daily lunch and dinner in our office

Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

Travel

How we're different

Build believes in the Bitter Lesson. By taking a general approach of learning from humans, our addressable market is all physical labor.

We are a fully in-person team in San Francisco (Financial District) and Shenzhen (Nanshan), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

Build AI is an equal opportunity employer. We review every application. If you do not meet every bullet, still apply. Questions: research@build.ai