Full-Time

Director – Data Services

Data Services

Posted on 7/25/2025

Samba TV

Samba TV

201-500 employees

Delivers TV audience measurement and insights

Compensation Overview

$220k - $240k/yr

San Francisco, CA, USA

In Person

Category
Data & Analytics (2)
,
Required Skills
Machine Learning
Databricks
Requirements
  • 8+ years of PM experience, with deep exposure to data infrastructure, ML platforms, or enterprise governance tooling.
  • Strong fluency in machine learning concepts, such as embeddings, training pipelines, model drift, and vector indexing.
  • Experience working with modern data stacks: Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and concepts like RBAC, schema enforcement, and metadata systems.
  • Proven success in leading cross-functional platform products with multiple stakeholder groups (data science, engineering, legal, external partners).
  • Ability to influence highly technical teams while also driving stakeholder alignment across compliance and business functions.
Responsibilities
  • Own the long-term roadmap for how Samba’s internal data and ML assets are made accessible, safe, and product-ready.
  • Partner with ML, infra, data platform, legal, and cross-functional product teams to create cohesive frameworks for access control, modeling, data discovery, and reusability.
  • Translate technical primitives (e.g., vector similarity search, data lineage) into product-level benefits for internal and external customers.
  • Drive adoption and best practices across internal teams by evangelizing platform capabilities while balancing compliance, scale, and usability.
  • Contribute to external partner enablement, especially where governance or ML modeling intersects with customer-facing solutions.
Desired Qualifications
  • Bonus: Experience at an adtech, martech, or audience data company, where data governance and modeling intersect with commercial product delivery.

Samba TV collects and analyzes TV viewing data to help advertisers, broadcasters, and content creators understand what people watch. It embeds its technology in about 35 million smart TVs across 20 brands, creating a large viewership database and a household identity graph. The system works by using a proprietary multi-source panel from participating TVs to gather viewing activity, then turning that data into insights and analytics that clients can use to plan ads, optimize content, and measure performance. What sets Samba TV apart is the size and scope of its data: it claims the largest end-to-end viewership dataset and identity graph in the industry, with a panel hundreds of times larger than typical measurements and broad brand partnerships, while offering privacy controls for viewers who opt in or out. The company aims to provide data-driven, actionable insights to improve advertising effectiveness and content delivery across the global smart TV market.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Debt Financing

Total Funding

$75.7M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2008

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Secured $60M venture debt in May 2026 to fund AI tools and acquisitions.
  • Partnerships with Disney, TikTok, Snap, and MediaTek expand global reach.
  • Appointed Jaya Aswani as CTO and Katie Soo to board in 2026 for AI scaling.

What critics are saying

  • Nielsen's $1.6B acquisition by Vista in 2023 bundles offerings undercutting Samba.
  • Google's Privacy Sandbox deprecation erodes Samba's household identity graph advantage.
  • $60M debt repayment forces dilutive raises if acquisitions underperform by 2028.

What makes Samba TV unique

  • Samba TV's patented ACR technology, invented in 2011, integrates across 24 top Smart TV brands.
  • Proprietary multi-source TV panel is 100 times larger than legacy measurement systems.
  • Samba Knowledge Graph uses first-party data from 48 million TVs and billions of web users.

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Benefits

Flexible Work Hours

Remote Work Options

Professional Development Budget

Mental Health Support

Company Equity

Employee Discounts

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

1%

2 year growth

-7%
TV Tech
Dec 8th, 2025
Samba TV Secures New Funding of up to $60 Million

Samba TV secures new funding of up to $60 million. SAN FRANCISCO - Samba TV has announced that it has secured new financing from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation, an affiliate of Monroe Capital, with an initial venture debt facility of $30 million, and up to $30 million more to support future growth. Samba TV said it will use the capital to accelerate the AI transformation in media and advertising, driving adoption of its advanced agentic advertising solutions. The financing will also support its efforts to expand its global operations and strategic partnerships, as a unified, cross-platform measurement source for global DSPs, SSPs and major platforms like TikTok and Snap. In addition, Samba reported that it "is now capitalized to continue its track-record of strategic acquisitions of technology companies." "The traditional advertising playbook is obsolete and Samba is delivering Agentic AI infrastructure the industry needs to execute with unified, real-time infrastructure to optimize every screen," said Ashwin Navin, CEO and co-founder of Samba TV. "This growth capital provides the strategic flexibility and firepower to aggressively execute our AI product roadmap, scale our global partnerships, and opportunistically execute on M&A opportunities when they present themselves. We chose to partner with Horizon because of their deep understanding of the technology landscape and their ability to provide sophisticated, non-dilutive capital solutions that align with our long-term vision." "The media and advertising sector is at a critical inflection point, and Samba has established itself as an indispensable global leader," said Mark Solovy, managing director and co-head, Technology Finance Group at Monroe Capital, the parent company of Horizon. "Samba TV's proprietary data, advanced AI platform, and its deep integration with the world's leading media platforms represent the exact kind of durable, scalable business model we seek to invest in. We are thrilled to provide the growth capital to support Ashwin and his team as they capitalize on this massive market opportunity."

Axios
Dec 8th, 2025
Samba TV raises $60M venture debt for acquisitions and AI measurement tools

Samba TV has secured up to $60 million in venture debt to fund acquisitions and develop AI-powered measurement tools, CEO Ashwin Navin told Axios. The funding reflects intensifying competition in the media measurement industry as advertisers demand real-time, cross-platform insights to optimise campaigns across television and digital channels. The venture debt will enable the company to scale its operations and expand its capabilities in tracking viewer behaviour and advertising effectiveness across multiple platforms.

MrWeb Ltd
Sep 5th, 2025
Daily Research News Online

Media intelligence firm Samba TV has announced a partnership with smart TV chipset supplier MediaTek, to launch 'Samba AI with MiraAware', an AI solution offering TV manufacturers, platforms and advertisers real-time, contextual intelligence for CTV content.

Digital IT News
Sep 4th, 2025
Samba AI Powers EdgeAI on Connected TVs with MediaTek

Samba TV and MediaTek launched Samba AI with MiraAware, an edge AI breakthrough that delivers real-time contextual intelligence to connected TVs (CTV).

MarTech360
Jun 18th, 2025
Samba TV and InfoSum Join Forces to Deliver Scalable, Privacy-First Agentic Media Measurement

Samba TV, a global leader in AI-powered media intelligence, announced a strategic international partnership with InfoSum, the world's leading data collaboration platform and part of WPP.

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