Director, Data Services
Samba TV
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted on Jul 1, 2025
Samba TV tracks streaming and broadcast video across the world with our proprietary data and technology. We are on a mission to fundamentally transform the viewing experience for everyone. Our data enables media companies to connect with audiences for new shows and movies, and enables advertisers to engage viewers and measure reach across all their devices. We have an amazing story with a unique perspective on culture formed by a global footprint of data and AI-driven insights.
The Director of Data Services will be a pivotal business and product leader responsible for the entire data lakehouse layer of Samba TV's platform, establishing it as the central, unified data foundation for all product offerings. This role is crucial for integrating and standardizing all Samba data and data policies, ensuring best-in-class data quality, accessibility, and implementation of governance.
This leader will define and execute the strategy for SambaTV’s internal data platforms, including:
- Embeddings Platform: Design and scale the infrastructure that powers audience modeling, targeting, and measurement using high-dimensional vector representations of behavioral data.
- Unity Catalog & Governance: Lead governance and data access strategy across teams by driving adoption and evolution of Unity Catalog, role based access controls (RBAC) frameworks, and lineage tracking.
Key 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.
What you will bring:
- 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.
- Bonus: Experience at an adtech, martech, or audience data company, where data governance and modeling intersect with commercial product delivery.
This role is ideal for you if...
- You are a product leader with a systems and infrastructure mindset (vs. generalist) with technical fluency and the ability to connect the dots between governance and modeling, platform design and product acceleration.
- You also see yourself as a technical product strategist who can build robust foundations while enabling downstream teams to move faster, safer, and smarter.
- You enjoy a debate but can influence teams–direct and stakeholders–through trust building and with a bias for action.
Samba TV is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We strive to empower connection with one another, reflect the communities we serve, and tackle meaningful projects that make a real impact.
Samba TV may collect personal information directly from you, as a job applicant, Samba TV may also receive personal information from third parties, for example, in connection with a background, employment or reference check, in accordance with the applicable law. For further details, please see Samba's Applicant Privacy Policy. For residents of the EU , Samba Inc. is the data controller.