Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO

Position Summary

The Chief of Staff will support the Chief Executive Officer. As the CEO’s trusted advisor, this strategic thinker has deep operational experience and will partner with our executive leadership team in executing on key focus areas for the business.  The Chief of Staff will be responsible for directly supporting the CEO in corporate strategy, planning, management, metrics, and other work to deliver the mission of Appen.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with executive team members to ensure execution of agreed goals and initiatives
• Monitor daily operations throughout organization and address potential issues if/when they arise
• Prepare and manage internal and external communications on behalf of CEO to drive key messages and narratives established by the CEO
• Ensure key stakeholder management for the CEO including proactive management of key relationships both internally and externally (employees, executives, the Board, analysts, customers, industry organizations, and related)
• Develop productive meeting agendas and lead relevant meetings
• Identify pain points throughout the organization and optimize organizational processes and procedures to improve efficiencies across teams
• Represent company as required, including at industry events and conferences
• Projects and responsibilities will be varied and continue to evolve over time as new business needs emerge
• Support the CEO in preparation for corporate meetings, board meetings and meetings with key external stakeholders, including customers, policy makers, strategic partners, and financiers
• Proactively address business needs that require immediate attention

       Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Ability to think globally, strategically, and creatively
• Proven ability to lead and deliver projects and outcomes
• Leverages knowledge gained through prior experience, education, training to resolve issues and remove barriers
• Expert problem solver
• Keen business acumen and visionary leader

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in business or related field or equivalent job experience
• 15+ years professional experience in strategy or operations role or 3+ years as a Chief of Staff
• 10 years of experience planning and leading strategic initiatives
• Demonstrated ability in building successful teams
• Extensive experience advising and coaching top executives on strategic, organizational, and communications matters
• Fascinated by historical and evolving trends in AI
• Huge plus is a background in AI/ML

About Appen 

Appen is the global leader in data for the AI Lifecycle. With over 25 years of experience in data sourcing, data annotation, and model evaluation by humans, we enable organizations to launch the world’s most innovative artificial intelligence systems. Our expertise includes a global crowd of over 1 million skilled contractors who speak over 235 languages, in over 70,000 locations and 170 countries, and the industry’s most advanced AI-assisted data annotation platform. Our products and services give leaders in technology, automotive, financial services, retail, healthcare, and governments the confidence to launch world-class AI products. Founded in 1996, Appen has customers and offices globally. 

At Appen, we value performance, honesty, humility, and grit. We persevere and remain focused, whilst maintaining agility to achieve quality outcomes and exceed expectations. We’re truth tellers – respectfully of course. We take accountability for our actions and believe in giving and receiving direct feedback. We give credit where credit is due and show gratitude to others for their contributions. We seek diverse perspectives as we recognize the value in teamwork and collaboration. Through grit, we take ownership, and we do not give up.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Growth Strategy

High-quality training data necessarily includes human beings, to record and transcribe speech for example or recognize complex images. Appen uses a crowdsourced model to engage humans at scale, but this increases the cost, time, and complexity of providing data sets. The company relies on technology to accelerate and reduce the cost of training data. It has developed and acquired platform that manages and enables crowd workers.

Appen’s Growth Strategy is Built on Four Pillars

• Grow in New Markets: Drive growth in target customer segments China, Government, Enterprise, and Global Product
• Automate our annotation services: Leverage AI and ML in our labelling operations to improve the productivity and quality of our workforce
• Expand our product offering: Add new products and capabilities to expand into the broader data and AI market
• Evolve how we do business: Improve the scalability of our operations including sales, project delivery, and crowd management

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