Head of Data

Position: Head of Data

Company: r.Potential

Location: San Francisco Bay Area (Hybrid 2-3 days per week in office)

Reports to: VP of Engineering

Team: Data Science, Data Engineering, Data Platform

About r.Potential

r.Potential exists to help people and companies realize their full potential as AI changes work. We're building an enterprise platform that helps leaders decide where to invest, what work AI can realistically take on, and how people's roles should evolve. We independently prove whether those changes deliver real business results. Drawing on a proprietary, global view of work across millions of companies, we're developing repeatable ways for people and AI to work together. Our ambition is for each company's decisions and results to improve the next company's choices. Join us to help shape how the next generation of companies works. r.Potential is based in SF and backed by Salesforce and The Adecco Group.

About the Opportunity

Data is the product at r.Potential: it is what we sell, the evidence behind every claim we make to enterprise buyers, and a resource every team depends on. This is as much a product role as a technical one, owning what data we hold and acquire, what we build with it, how we expose it, and why customers can trust it. The role shapes what the company sells, not only how it runs. We need a leader who engages well beyond the data function, helping set where the company goes and starting new initiatives as readily as running the ones underway.

We are looking for a Head of Data to lead data as a function that serves our customers and every team in the company. You will own our data strategy, data products and data platform and partner with Product, Engineering, Security, GTM and executive leadership to turn our data into products customers trust and pay for.

About the Frontier You'll Help Shape

• Own r.Potential’s data strategy: a point of view on where our data assets should be in two years and what has to be true to get there, what we build or acquire and in what order, and what each source permits before the product depends on it.
  
• Define and drive the data product roadmap with Product: what our data makes possible for customers, and which capabilities we take to market.
  
• Own our data as an interface that systems consume, not only people: the schemas, versioning, revision and deprecation policies, and documentation that customers, partners and internal teams build against.
  
• Make every number we publish defensible, with the metric definitions, provenance, lineage, methodology and claim standards that hold up in front of enterprise buyers and their auditors, so we can state at any moment where a data point came from and what we are permitted to do with it.
  
• Lead, hire and grow the data team across data science, data engineering, knowledge graph and data platform work, and own the architecture, reliability and cost of our Databricks platform, directly at first and through the team as it grows.
  
• Guide production machine learning and analytics work, from model development and deployment to monitoring, experimentation and data quality.
  
• Partner with Security and counsel to govern data responsibly, covering licensing, privacy for workforce data, and the controls that support ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
  
• Engage across the company to advance the vision for our data, spark new thinking in the team, and bootstrap initiatives others will run: prove them out, then hand them off.

About the Technology You'll Build With

Our data platform runs on Databricks and Microsoft Azure, with PostgreSQL, Neo4j for our labor graph, Python, Spark and SQL, and REST APIs and microservices for delivery. The data spans licensed labor-market data, workforce and staffing data, and public occupational and skill taxonomies, at a scale of billions of records.

About Your Craft

• 10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning or data engineering, including 4+ years leading technical teams, with a strong hands-on foundation in Python, SQL, production machine learning, statistical modeling and lakehouse architecture: you can review a model or a pipeline design and be right.
• Experience heading data for a data product sold to external customers, including ownership of its data strategy: you decided what data to hold and acquire and were accountable for the outcome, rather than executing a roadmap handed to you.
• Product instinct and the communication to match: you can hold your own with Product and Engineering on what to build, and with enterprise customers on why our numbers can be trusted.
• Startup experience, comfortable being hands-on while directing the work, including owning a data product in production and keeping it accurate, current and trusted well after launch, not only standing it up.
• Experience on projects involving semantic modeling, ontologies, taxonomies or knowledge graphs, enough to engage deeply with specialists on design and explain the model to customers.
• Experience with third-party or partner data, including licensing constraints, usage and derived-work rights, and provenance.
• A record of leading beyond your remit: you have started an initiative outside your formal scope, proved it out, and handed it to a team that now runs it.
• Alignment with our belief that AI should be deployed responsibly to augment human work, and the judgment to build data products that reflect it.
  
  

About Your Edge

• Experience with externally consumed data APIs or data shares, including schema versioning, SLAs and developer documentation.
• Experience with labor-market, HR, workforce or organizational data.
• Deep Databricks expertise, including workspace design, Unity Catalog governance and cost management, plus familiarity with Microsoft Azure and infrastructure as code.
• Experience governing personal data under GDPR, and with data practices that support ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
• An advanced degree in a quantitative field.

About Working at r.Potential

This role is hybrid, with 2–3 days per week in our San Francisco office, and works directly with the CEO and executive leadership. You will lead an established data team with active hiring and the mandate to define how data works here. The work sits at the intersection of AI, measurement and the future of work, on a problem enterprises are struggling with today. We work with labor-market data at enterprise scale and believe AI should be deployed responsibly to augment human work.

r.Potential is part of The Adecco Group, one of the world’s largest employers. We believe in talent, not labels, and focus on the diverse and unique skills our people bring. We have zero tolerance for any unlawful discrimination or harassment, against any employee, associate, or candidate, at any stage of that person’s journey with us. We seek to foster a culture of belonging and purpose, an environment where everyone can thrive and feel engaged, and where difference is respected and valued. Our commitment to equity, equal opportunity, inclusion, and diversity is part of our broader commitment to respecting fundamental human rights across our value chain. rPotential is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled. Click here to read our
Candidate Privacy Information Statement, which explains how we will use your information.

The Company will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with federal, state, and local laws and/or security clearance requirements, including, as applicable:

• The California Fair Chance Act
• Los Angeles City Fair Chance Ordinance
• Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is between $260k - $300k. Compensation varies based on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, experience, education, key skills, and geographic location.

Benefit offerings for full-time employment include medical, dental, vision, term life and AD&D insurance, short-term and long-term disability, additional voluntary benefits, commuter benefits, wellness plans, and a 401k plan or a non-qualified deferred compensation plan. Available paid leave includes Personal Time Off (PTO) on an accrual basis up to 152 hours a year, 10 Paid Holidays, 1 Community Service Day, and up to 6 weeks of Paid Parental Leave. PTO and holiday hours are prorated based on hire date within the calendar year.