QA / Evaluation Lead
Innodata Inc. · Washington, District of Columbia, United States · $94K–$104K/yr
Business Consulting and Services · 5,001-10,000 employees
About the role
Design and own the evaluation framework and inter-annotator agreement methodology to ensure data quality for a federal AI program. Establish repeatable test processes, validation gates, and quality scoring to measure platform readiness.
What they look for
Requirements
Requires a Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field and 6+ years of professional experience, including 4+ years in AI/ML data quality. Must possess active Secret clearance with TS/SCI eligibility and hands-on expertise in IAA metrics like Cohen's kappa.
Full description
Innodata (Nasdaq: INOD) is a global data engineering company. We believe that data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are inextricably linked. Our mission is to enable the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence by providing the data, evaluation frameworks, and human expertise required to build AI systems that can be trusted at scale. We provide a range of transferable solutions, platforms, and services for Generative AI / AI builders and adopters. In every relationship, we honor our 36+ year legacy delivering the highest quality data and outstanding outcomes for our customers.
About the Program:
Innodata's Federal Practice builds the trusted data layer for critical infrastructure Trust & Safety work. Partnering with a leading systems integrator, we're delivering a modern, governed data services platform in a secure federal (IL4) environment. Over an intensive 20-week phase, you'll help stand up a data services storefront, a DataCard governance framework, synthetic data integration, and Databricks write-back capabilities.
About the Role:
As the QA/Evaluation Lead, you'll own quality and evaluation across the platform. You'll design the evaluation framework that measures whether our data services and outputs meet the bar, build repeatable test and validation processes, and give the team an objective read on readiness at each milestone. Partnering with the Delivery Owner and engineering leads, you'll turn quality from an afterthought into a measurable, demonstrable strength. It's a role for someone who thinks rigorously about evaluation and takes pride in evidence-backed quality.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and own the inter-annotator agreement (IAA) methodology for the Phase 1 demonstration corpus — metric selection (Cohen's kappa, Fleiss, Krippendorff's alpha), sampling design, adjudication workflow, and agreement thresholds
- Define evaluation framework architecture: test and evaluation plans, IAA targets, drift detection gates, and model performance metrics per SOW Section 2.9
- Configure and operate sampling-based quality control across the self-service and white-glove annotation paths during Phase D corpus production
- Design and implement confidence-threshold escalation routing from automated annotation to senior-annotator adjudication
- Validate quality scoring and IAA computation within the Innodata data layer
- Support AI Solutions Engineer on evaluation design for SAM 2 and Frontier model API validation — define what 'good enough' looks like quantitatively
- Produce evaluation framework documentation for the Phase 1 NPP closeout package, including per-DataCard documentation with the SA
Must-Have Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, or related quantitative field required; Master's degree preferred. Equivalent experience may substitute for degree on a 2-for-1 basis.
- 6+ years total professional experience, 4+ years in data quality, evaluation methodology, or QA on AI/ML programs
- IAA methodology expertise — Cohen's kappa, Fleiss' kappa, Krippendorff's alpha: hands-on, not theoretical
- Evaluation framework design for AI/ML training data programs
- QC process design: sampling methodology, escalation workflows, adjudication protocols
- Python for QC tooling, metric computation, and statistical analysis
- Active Secret clearance with TS/SCI eligibility
Nice-to-Have Qualifications:
- Prior DoD or IC data quality program experience
- CVAT or equivalent annotation platform QC workflow configuration
- Drift detection and model monitoring methodology
- Experience with FMV / video annotation quality standards
The expected hourly salary range for this position is $45 to $50 p/hour, based on experience, skills, and qualifications.
Note to Candidates:
This role is not a project manager with QC responsibilities — it is a methodology expert who owns the intellectual framework behind data quality on a federal AI program. The right candidate can walk into a meeting with Government evaluators and explain exactly why the evaluation design produces trustworthy labels. That conversation is part of Phase 2 positioning.
Please be aware of recruitment scams involving individuals or organizations falsely claiming to represent employers. Innodata will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the application process. To learn more on how to recognize job scams, please visit the Federal Trade Commission’s guide at https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams.
If you believe you’ve been targeted by a recruitment scam, please report it to Innodata at verifyjoboffer@innodata.com and consider reporting it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
