Senior Manager - Operations

Location: Bengaluru

Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we're looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.

About Instawork Robotics Labs

Instawork Robotics Labs is a new initiative within Instawork. We work with the world's leading robotics and AI labs to collect, manage, and deliver high-quality training data at scale - using a worker network of 10M+ professionals across the US and six countries. This is early. This is foundational. What we build now will define the next decade of robotics.

Why this role exists (read this first)

At Instawork Robotics Labs, we're building the operational backbone that powers robotics and AI labs across the world. Not dashboards. Not pilots. Real data, at real scale, in real environments.

This role is for someone who doesn't only want to  run  ops. They want to build the operating system.

If you've ever looked at chaos and thought  'give me 30 days and a mandate'  - keep reading.

What you'll actually do

You will own and execute end-to-end robotics data collection programs in the APAC region. That means:

Launching new data collection programs from zero
Setting up residential homes, offices, Airbnbs, and field locations from scratch
Designing workflows that work in the real world, not slides
Running multi-city, multi-country operations
Recruiting, onboarding, training, and managing large worker cohorts across APAC
Ensuring diversity, quality, speed, and safety at scale
Leading leaders
Managing Team Leads, Trainers, QA Leads, and Ops Managers running parallel programs
Holding the bar on output, quality, and velocity
Working with external muscle
Partnering with BBOs, staffing firms, logistics vendors to rapidly scale capacity
Knowing when to build in-house vs. augment externally
Executing under ambiguity
Client requirements will change, Data specs will evolve
Timelines will compress
You will adapt fast and still deliver
Being on the ground
Travel is part of the job
You'll see operations where they actually happen, not just through reports

What makes this role hard (and fun)

No playbooks exist — you'll write them
Scale will come before perfection
Every project looks different
Failure is fast, learning is faster
Quality is non-negotiable

If that excites you, you're in the right place.

What we're looking for (beyond the résumé)

We don't care about fancy titles. We care about operators. You're likely a fit if you have:

15 years of operations experience (10 years acceptable for IIT/IIM grads with strong execution depth)
Experience running large, distributed, real-world operations E-commerce, logistics, marketplaces, fast-scaling startups, field ops, or hardware-adjacent orgs
A highly analytical mindset
You think in throughput, yield, SLAs, cost curves, and failure modes
You're comfortable living inside dashboards and ground reality at the same time
Extreme agility and resilience
Plans change - you don't freeze
Pressure rises - you get clearer
Strong people leadership
You build teams people want to run through walls for
You demand a lot, and you give more
Comfort working across cultures and time zones
India, US, and 6+ countries
Clear communication, zero ego
Bonus (not required): exposure to robotics, hardware, AI data, or supply chain ops

Why join now

Zero legacy, full ownership
Direct exposure to global AI & robotics leaders
Build something that hasn't been built before
High visibility with leadership
Learn faster than anywhere else

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…