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Scale AI

Supplies AI training data and builds AI apps

Subcontracts Manager - Public Sector

Program ManagementConfirmed live in the last 24 hours
Full-timeWashington, DC, USA

About the Job

Requirements

  • Active Top Secret clearance.
  • At least 5 years of experience in program management, technical program management, subcontractor management, defense acquisition, systems integration, or a related role.
  • Experience managing external organizations against defined scope, schedules, milestones, and deliverables.
  • Experience working with Integrated Master Schedules, Work Breakdown Structures, Statements of Work, deliverable tracking, and formal program reviews.
  • Strong technical acumen and the ability to understand software, systems integration, interfaces, dependencies, and technical program plans without being the engineer approving the work.
  • Ability to operate across technical and administrative domains, including engineering dependencies and program schedules, invoicing, onboarding, and documentation.
  • Experience building and managing integrated program plans with multiple teams, workstreams, and external dependencies.
  • Ability to influence organizations and individuals outside the direct reporting chain.
  • Ability to hold sophisticated external partners accountable, including escalating performance issues when necessary.
  • Written and verbal communication skills to communicate clearly with engineers, program managers, executives, subcontractors, and government stakeholders.
  • Organizational skills and attention to detail, particularly around commitments, documentation, financial workflows, and schedule management.
  • High ownership and a track record of proactively identifying risks and driving them through resolution.
  • Willingness to work onsite in the Washington, DC area as required to support customers, programs, and classified work.
  • Willingness to travel to subcontractor facilities as required.

Responsibilities

  • Own day-to-day relationships with subcontractors supporting large Public Sector programs, including major defense primes and specialized technical partners.
  • Understand Scale’s overall technical solution and ensure each subcontractor understands how its scope, interfaces, and deliverables fit into that solution.
  • Translate prime contract milestones and program requirements into subcontractor deliverables, timelines, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
  • Integrate subcontractor activities into the broader Integrated Master Schedule and proactively identify dependencies, risks, and potential schedule impacts.
  • Hold subcontractors accountable for committed scope, timelines, deliverables, status reporting, and corrective actions when execution falls behind.
  • Partner with Scale technical leads and program managers, who review and approve the technical quality of subcontractor work, while owning execution, coordination, and follow-through.
  • Establish operating cadences with subcontractors, including status reviews, action tracking, risk management, decision logs, and escalation mechanisms.
  • Drive resolution of technical and programmatic blockers across Scale teams, subcontractors, customers, and other external stakeholders.
  • Lead onboarding of new subcontractors and ensure they have program context, systems access, security requirements, documentation, and operating processes necessary to execute.
  • Coordinate the flow-down and tracking of applicable security, access, compliance, and program requirements.
  • Manage subcontractor administrative workflows, including invoices, billing questions, documentation requests, staffing changes, access issues, and other day-to-day operational needs.
  • Provide Scale program managers with a clear view of subcontractor performance and proactively escalate issues before they impact government deliverables.
  • Build productive, high-trust relationships with subcontractor teams while maintaining accountability and execution standards.

Desired Qualifications

  • Experience working with or for a major defense prime contractor or managing relationships with traditional defense primes.
  • Experience supporting large Department of Defense or Intelligence Community contracts.
  • Familiarity with government contracting structures, subcontract administration, Federal Acquisition Regulation and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement requirements, and flow-down obligations.
  • Experience managing subcontractors delivering software, artificial intelligence/machine learning, data, systems integration, or other technically complex capabilities.
  • Familiarity with artificial intelligence/machine learning systems, generative artificial intelligence, agentic workflows, application programming interfaces, data pipelines, or modern software architectures.
  • Experience supporting classified programs and coordinating security requirements, personnel access, and work across secure environments.
  • Familiarity with subcontractor invoicing, cost tracking, forecasting, and financial reconciliation.
  • Domain knowledge on technical topics related to homeland layered defense.

About the Company

Scale AI

Supplies AI training data and builds AI apps

Scale AI supplies the data that AI labs use to train and test their models, and it builds custom AI applications for companies and government agencies such as the Pentagon. It first made its name labeling camera and sensor data for self-driving car companies like Waymo, then worked with OpenAI on InstructGPT, the 2022 forerunner of ChatGPT. Freelancers, some of them doctors and lawyers, write, label, and grade examples through its Outlier platform, and labs pay Scale for this data and for tests of model quality. Clients pay Scale to build AI tools on their own data, and some of those tools run on classified military networks. Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo founded Scale AI in 2016, and it is based in San Francisco.

Company size
1,001-5,000
Company stage
Acquired
Total funding
$1.6B
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
Founded
2016

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