Site Lead - Johor Bahru

About us:

Calder is solving the data bottleneck for embodied AI and world models. Today's AI models lack the real-world, 4D data needed to reason on spatial problems and operate in physical environments. We capture, process, and deliver high-fidelity human-generated spatial data at scale, providing the substrate that trains the next generation of generalizable models for manipulation, navigation, and interaction.

Calder is hiring a Site Lead to build and run our Johor Bahru, Malaysia site, which will carry a large share of our quality control and tele-operations work. Calder produces real-world training data for robotics and AI labs, including egocentric video, tele-operated robot demonstrations and 3D capture. Every hour we deliver passes through QC and QA, and that capacity must scale quickly, reliably and at a lower cost per hour.

You will be the senior Calder employee on the ground in Johor Bahru, accountable for the site's output, quality and safety. You will work alongside a local partner that employs the operators, while you own productivity, quality and workforce performance. You will stand the site up, hire and train the leadership team, and ramp it from a pilot cohort to full production.

About the role:

You own everything that happens on site and in the local offsite network, across QC/QA and tele-operations.

Site setup and operations

• Lead site selection, fit-out, security controls, IT and equipment setup, and go-live for the Johor Bahru facility

• Run day-to-day operations across multiple shifts, including scheduling, attendance, capacity planning and throughput against daily and weekly delivery targets

• Own site safety, data security and access controls, including PII handling, and meet customer and audit requirements such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001

• Manage the site budget and track cost per delivered hour

QC/QA

• Operate the QC/QA floor for egocentric, tele-operations and 3D capture data, applying Calder's QA SOPs, checklists and tooling

• Hit targets for QA yield, throughput per operator, rework and on-time delivery, and report them weekly

• Run calibration, sampling and audit routines, including verifying a share of partner-produced QA, so quality stays consistent across sites

• Work with Calder engineering to pilot new QA tooling and auto-QA, and shift operator effort to review of ambiguous cases as automation matures

• Feed defects and edge cases back to collection teams, vendors and engineering

Tele-operations

• Stand up and run the tele-operations area, including robot scenes, props, calibration and VR or shadow-arm rigs

• Schedule operators and robots to maximize collected hours, track robot uptime and maintenance, and coordinate repairs and spares with the robotics team

• Make sure demonstrations meet task specs and quality metrics before they enter QA

• Plan logistics for robot import, customs and movement between sites

People and partners

• Hire, train and manage Calder pod leads and site staff, with one lead for roughly every 12 to 16 operators

• Manage the local employer-of-record or BPO partner on hiring, payroll, HR compliance, onboarding and training, and hold them to SLAs

• Source and manage local offsite collection partners and vendors where needed

• Build a culture of accuracy, safety and accountability, and handle performance issues fairly and quickly

Reporting and coordination

• Report site KPIs, risks and capacity plans to Calder Operations leadership each week

• Coordinate with the USA QA team, Singapore, Toronto and Atlanta sites on SOPs, handoffs and surge capacity

• Support customer visits, demos and audits at the site

About you:

You have run a high-volume data, QA or operations floor in Southeast Asia and can build a team from zero.

• 8+ years in operations, data quality, annotation or BPO management, including at least 3 years leading sites or teams of 50 or more people

• Direct experience running QC/QA or annotation workflows at scale, with ownership of yield, throughput and quality metrics

• Experience managing an outsourced or blended workforce, including SLAs, calibration and performance management with a BPO or employer-of-record partner

• Experience opening or scaling a site, including facility, hiring, training and security setup, ideally in Malaysia, Singapore or the wider region

• Comfort running two shifts and managing shift leads, attendance and workforce planning

• Working knowledge of data security and compliance practices such as PII handling and SOC 2 or ISO 27001

• Strong data skills: you can read dashboards, build KPI reports and use a spreadsheet or SQL to diagnose quality problems

• Clear written and spoken English, and the ability to work with remote engineering and operations teams across time zones

• Right to live and work in Malaysia, or willingness to relocate to Johor Bahru, with the ability to travel to Singapore, USA, and Canada as required

Nice to have

• Experience with egocentric, robotics, autonomous vehicle or other spatial and sensor data

• Familiarity with annotation platforms and QA tooling such as Scale AI, Labelbox or CVAT

• Experience with robot or tele-operation hardware, including VR rigs and calibration

• Experience working with automation or auto-QA systems and moving human review toward audit and exception handling

• Fluency in Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin or both, and existing relationships with Johor Bahru BPO and facility providers

• Experience with Malaysian employment practice, including contractors, EPF and SOCSO, working through an employer-of-record partner

Calder is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. Learn more here.
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