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Head of Robotics & Applied AI

San Francisco, California, United States

Instawork’s vision is to create economic opportunities for local businesses and skilled hourly workers in communities around the world. With an AI-first approach, we’re supercharging the leading online labor marketplace and looking for exceptional talent to help us build the future of hourly work. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and more, we want you to help us continue to scale quickly and make an even greater impact.

Reporting to the Co-Founder and CEO, Instawork is seeking a Head of Robotics & Applied AI. This is a unique opportunity to drive our strategy and operations in a rapidly evolving field, including thinking through how our growing network of 8M+ Pros in the “physical world” can help shape a successful future for robotics and LLM training. You will be responsible for cultivating both new and existing relationships, understanding partner data needs, and driving novel solution delivery to help Instawork become a labor leader in the robotics and AI ecosystem.

Who You Are:

  • Proven Relationship Builder: The ideal candidate has at least 2-4 years of experience in robotics and physical AI. Demonstrated ability to cultivate and manage partnerships with innovative robotics or large LLM makers. Familiarity with the robotics and AI ecosystem, including key players, trends, and challenges.
  • Technical Curiosity: Comfortable engaging with technical teams and understanding data, AI, and robotics workflows. The ideal candidate has a strong technical background and previous experience working in robotics.
  • Multi-disciplinary Executor: Experience working across engineering, operations, and other functions to deliver results and strong problem solving capabilities (experience working on operational challenges is a plus).
  • Strategic Thinker: Ability to adapt strategy as the market and technology landscape evolves, helping Instawork remain at the cutting edge.

What You'll Do:

  • Strategic Execution: Help define and implement Instawork’s strategy for the cultivation of AI training data overall, especially robotics and “physical AI” companies, adapting to evolving industry needs and opportunities.
  • Thought Leadership: Represent Instawork externally as a leader in the robotics and AI space, fostering innovation and collaboration. Regularly present progress, insights, and recommendations to Instawork's executive leadership, helping shape the company’s growth strategy and long-term vision.
  • Partnership Development: Build and grow relationships with top companies developing robotics and physical AI solutions.
  • Market and Data Needs Analysis: Deeply understand partner data requirements and how Instawork can support them in collecting and enriching data to improve their AI models.
  • Cross-Functional Leadership: Work closely with engineering, operations, and other internal teams to execute on partner data needs and deliver high-quality solutions that will drive AI advancement in the physical world.

For CA based applicants:

  • The base salary for this position is $200,000 - $300,000.
  • This position is eligible for equity in the form of stock options.
  • This position is eligible for Instawork benefits, including:
    • A variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
    • Flexible paid time off
    • At least 8 paid company holidays annually
    • Phone stipend
    • Commuter stipend
    • Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
    • Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
    • Flexible spending plans
    • 401K plan
    • Perkspot - discount program through Lumity

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above.

Our Values 

  • Empathy, Trust & Candor
    We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.

  • Bias for Action
    We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!

  • Always Be Learning
    We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.

  • Act Like an Owner
    We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.

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