Strategic Project Lead / Delivery Manager 

Data Annotation & AI Delivery

8+ Years of Experience

Position Overview

We are looking for a seasoned Delivery Manager (8+ years of experience) to lead large-scale data annotation and curation projects in support of cutting-edge LLM and multimodal AI research. You will oversee end-to-end delivery for projects with 100+ team members, ensure world-class data quality, and drive process and tooling innovation in collaboration with AI researchers and cross-functional teams.

This role is ideal for someone who combines deep technical expertise, proven leadership in managing large teams, and a passion for advancing AI/ML innovation. Given that our key customers operate in the data analytics, data engineering, and Business Intelligence (BI) space, the ideal candidate will bring hands-on leadership experience with platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake, enabling them to deeply understand customer domains, speak their language, and deliver annotation outcomes that are contextually relevant and technically sound.

Primary Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, mentor, and grow large-scale teams of annotators and trainers.
• Drive performance management, career development, and targeted training.
• Foster a culture of excellence, ownership, and continuous learning.
• Design and implement motivation strategies (including gamification) to boost engagement and reward top performers.

1. Project Management & Coordination

• Define and manage project scope, objectives, timelines, and quality metrics.
• Align with cross-functional stakeholders on goals and deliverables.
• Proactively identify and resolve delivery risks, blockers, and dependencies.
• Provide clear and consistent reporting on progress, challenges, and solutions.

1. Data Quality & Integrity

• Own quality control and data integrity across the annotation lifecycle.
• Analyze datasets to identify trends, anomalies, and insights for improvement.
• Implement best practices for annotation, evaluation, and data curation.
• Share learnings and continuously improve quality processes.

1. Technical Collaboration & Innovation

• Partner with engineering and research teams to optimize internal tooling.
• Stay ahead of emerging trends in AI, ML, and multimodal processing.
• Champion innovations that reduce task completion times and improve efficiency.
• Maintain clear and scalable documentation for processes and training.

1. Customer & Domain Engagement

• Serve as a domain-knowledgeable point of contact for customers operating in data engineering, analytics, and BI environments.
• Leverage hands-on experience with platforms like Databricks and Snowflake to understand customer data workflows, terminology, and quality expectations.
• Translate customer-specific data engineering and BI contexts into clear, actionable annotation guidelines and quality benchmarks for delivery teams.
• Collaborate with customers to define annotation taxonomies and evaluation criteria that align with their data pipeline and analytics use cases.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in engineering, program management, or delivery of large-scale projects.
• Proven ability to lead and scale large teams (100+ members) with measurable impact.
• Strong technical grounding in AI/ML, data annotation, and multimodal systems.
• Hands-on leadership experience in data analytics, data engineering, or BI domains, with working knowledge of platforms such as Databricks and/or Snowflake (architecture, pipelines, data modeling, and production workflows).
• Familiarity with the modern data stack including ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehouses, data lakes, and BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or similar).
• Ability to translate complex data engineering and analytics concepts into annotation frameworks, quality standards, and training materials.
• Proficiency in Python (preferred) or Swift for data analysis and automation.
• Strong mathematical and analytical skills for data-driven problem solving.
• Experience in data curation, annotation pipelines, and quality control.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Track record of driving high-quality outputs under tight deadlines.

Preferred Skills & Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, or related fields.
• Experience applying gamification to workforce engagement.
• Familiarity with modern project management tools & methodologies.
• Exposure to state-of-the-art multimodal AI technologies.
• Prior experience managing annotation or data labeling projects for customers in the data engineering, analytics, or BI space.
• Familiarity with SQL at an advanced level and data orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow, dbt, or Prefect.
• Certifications in Databricks (e.g., Data Engineer Associate) or Snowflake (e.g., SnowPro Core) are a plus.

Why we're hiring:

WPP Media is embarking on a transformative data journey through Databridge—our internal comprehensive data strategy and framework designed to unify our fragmented global data landscape. We are moving from isolated, market-specific implementations to a standardized, scalable, cloud-agnostic, and AI-ready data platform built on a modern tech stack: dbt, Databricks, Python (dlthub), and GitHub Actions. 

 As Data Operations Lead, you will establish and head our new Data Integration & Operations team in Chennai. This is a build-and-run role: you'll define how the team operates while leading day-to-day delivery of operational excellence across global data products. 

 You will be the custodian of production—owning the operational layer including CI/CD automation, deployment pipelines, monitoring, data quality enforcement, incident management, and support. This role requires deep technical knowledge of Databricks and modern data platforms, alongside the ability to lead, mentor, and scale a growing team.

What you'll be doing:

Technical Ownership & Execution 

• Lead the team responsible for data integration, orchestration, and platform operations across Azure and GCP environments 

• Build and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Databricks Asset Bundles for data workflows 

• Design platform-wide monitoring, logging, and alerting covering pipeline execution, data quality, SLA compliance, and cost 

• Manage production deployments and own centralized job orchestration via Databricks Jobs/Workflows (scheduling, dependencies, retries, notifications) 

• Implement comprehensive data quality testing and validation using dbt's testing framework and custom checks 

Operational Standardization 

• Create and roll out standard operating procedures, runbooks, onboarding guides, and automation patterns 

• Establish reusable deployment frameworks and project templates for consistent implementation across markets 

• Build and maintain the Central Data Solution Repository with reusable assets (dlthub pipelines, dbt models, tests, macros) 

• Define repeatable deployment patterns ensuring standards and best practices are followed globally 

Platform Support & Governance 

• Set up and manage SLAs, incident workflows, and escalation models 

• Proactively identify and resolve operational risks in cloud-based data platforms 

• Partner with DevOps to leverage Databricks Unity Catalog for governance, access control, and lineage 

• Enforce data quality standards and governance policies embedded within pipeline code 

Team Leadership 

• Lead and mentor the Data Integration & Operations team in Chennai 

• Shape the team's operating model, priorities, and capabilities 

• Act as subject matter expert and escalation point for technical operations 
• Facilitate regular retrospectives to drive continuous improvement and optimize processes 
• Collaborate with Data Engineering, DevOps, and Product teams globally 

What you'll need:

Experience 

• 7+ years in data operations, platform engineering, or data engineering with hands-on production experience 

• 3+ years in technical leadership or team lead capacity, with proven ability to build and scale teams 
• Demonstrated experience establishing DataOps practices and operational frameworks from the ground up 

Technical Expertise 

• Deep, hands-on experience with Databricks platform, specifically: 

• Databricks SQL Warehouses, Unity Catalog, Jobs/Workflows 

• Databricks Asset Bundles for Infrastructure as Code 

• Delta Lake performance optimization 

• Strong proficiency with dbt (Core): project structure, macros, tests, documentation, CI/CD integration, production troubleshooting 

• Expert-level cloud platform knowledge (Azure and/or GCP): 

• Object storage (ADLS/GCS), secret management (Key Vault/Secret Manager) 

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) 

• CI/CD mastery with GitHub Actions: workflow design, secrets management, automated testing and deployment 

• Proficient in Python for automation and scripting (experience with dlthub is a major plus) 

• Strong SQL skills for data validation, quality testing, and troubleshooting 

Operational & Leadership Skills 

• Proven ability to design operational frameworks: monitoring, alerting, incident management, SLA tracking 

• Experience managing production data platforms with high uptime requirements 

• Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate technical concepts to diverse audiences 
• Strong documentation skills and commitment to knowledge sharing 

• Preferred Skills 

  • Experience working in multi-cloud environments (Azure + GCP) 
  • Familiarity with Power BI or similar BI platforms 
  • Understanding of FinOps practices for cloud cost optimization

Who Should Apply 

 This role is ideal for candidates with: 

• Real, hands-on project experience building and running production data platforms at scale 

• Proven leadership in establishing DataOps practices and growing high-performing teams 

• Deep technical expertise in the Databricks ecosystem and modern data stack 

• Entrepreneurial mindset—comfortable with ambiguity and building systems from the ground up 

 This role is not a fit if your experience is primarily theoretical, course-based, or lacks production-grade exposure to the core technologies outlined above. 

Who you are:

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – We aim to create a culture in which people can do extraordinary work.

Scale and opportunity – We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge?