Manager, AI Data Strategy

Data is central to AiDASH's business. The satellite / aerial / drone / lidar data and the strategy that governs it, determines the value delivered to customers and the efficacy of AI models that can be developed. This sets the company's most significant cost and margin drivers, making disciplined and efficient decision-making critical to business performance. AI Data Strategy is a newly established function that owns this data strategy. It integrates customer, product, technical and business requirements to determine what data AiDASH acquires, when, at what cost, and on what basis, often under conditions of uncertainty and competing priorities.  

As Manager, AI Data Strategy, you will define the data strategy and lead the function's day-to-day decision process. You will also own transformation of this into an agentic workflow in which AI agents recommend and route purchase decisions, with human review reserved for exceptions. 

What you’ll do:

• Define the AI data strategy, across products and customer types
• Drive every data purchase decision, approving orders that meet the bar on cost, customer needs and model fit.
• Evaluate sourcing options with AI Data Ops, such as archive vs. new capture, satellite vs. aerial, vendors and timing, and recommend the best fit.
• Lead monthly quote-to-actual analysis, identify root causes of variance, and drive revisions to cost bands and decision rules.
• Build multi-year data plans and the unit-cost models behind data pricing.
• Partner with Data Science and Engineering to define requirements for production tooling, and drive adoption across user teams.
• Design and prototype the agentic workflow by turning guidelines into machine-readable rules and piloting AI-assisted steps. 

Who you'll work with 

You'll work with Customer Success and engagement managers, AI Data Ops, Data Science and R&D, Partnerships, Finance, Legal, and Sales and Product. You will draw on their inputs, including customer scope, vendor quotes, model requirements, contract terms, and actual costs, and provide clear order decisions, cost bands, forecasts, and root-cause analysis in return. You’ll work closely with the leadership to define the strategic direction for data in Aidash. 

What we are looking for 

Must have 

• MBA plus 5 to 6 years in management or analytics consulting, strategy and operations, procurement or sourcing strategy, or a commercial finance role at a B2B or SaaS company. 
• Strong cost and commercial analysis. You can build a unit-cost model from scratch, take apart someone else's, and explain a variance to its root cause. 
• Advanced proficiency in Excel or Google Sheets and working knowledge of SQL. 
• Demonstrated experience designing decision rules, thresholds, or approval workflows adopted by other teams. 
• Regular use of AI tools, with at least one workflow automated, with or without code. 
• Proven ability to influence without authority 
• Excellent written communication, with the ability to present a recommendation and its trade-offs concisely. 

Nice to have: Exposure to geospatial data or the utilities sector; experience with Python or low-code automation tools such as n8n or Power Automate; familiarity with vendor scorecards and BI tools. A remote sensing background is not required. 

Why join 

Build a function from its first quarter with direct visibility to leadership, own decisions that move gross margin, and ship one of AiDASH's first agentic business workflows.