Strategic Projects Lead, Canada

The Role

We’re hiring a Country Operations Lead, Canada to own and grow Mecka’s on-the-ground operations in Canada.

Canada is a strategic operating geography for Mecka — home to a deep talent pool across robotics, ML, and hardware, proximity to many of our North American customers and research partners, and a strong base for data capture, annotation, and hardware-enabled programs. We need a senior local operator to build the team, run the site, and turn Canada into one of Mecka’s strongest delivery engines.

This role reports to Mecka’s Operations Lead. You will be the most senior Mecka leader in Canada — the face of the company locally and the single owner of country-level execution.

Mecka AI works with leading AI labs, foundation model teams, and robotics companies to deliver high‑quality, real‑world datasets used to train and deploy the next generation of robotic systems. Our data supports visuomotor learning, imitation learning, and real‑world robotic control. Quality, trust, and execution are core to our partnerships.

What You’ll Work On

Country P&L and Operations

• End-to-End Country Ownership: Own end-to-end operations in Canada: data collection sites, annotation operations, and robotics / hardware deployment programs.

• Country-Level Targets: Hit country-level targets across throughput, quality, cost, and on‑time delivery.

• Budget & Margin: Manage the country budget, vendor spend, and operating margin.

• Executive Reporting: Report country performance to the Operations Lead and broader exec team.

Team Leadership

• Local Team Building: Hire, develop, and lead the local team: operations managers, project leads, field operators, recruiters, and support staff.

• Org Design: Build the local org structure from the ground up where it doesn’t exist, or scale it where it does.

• Manager Development: Coach and grow local managers into stronger operators.

• Execution Culture: Foster a culture of ownership, clarity, and execution.

Delivery Execution

• Customer Program Delivery: Own delivery of all customer programs running in-country.

• HQ Alignment: Partner with HQ Strategic Project Leads and Deployment teams to align local execution with global customer commitments.

• Local Operating Standards: Stand up local SOPs, playbooks, and quality frameworks that match Mecka’s global standards.

• Operating Cadence: Run the daily and weekly cadence that keeps programs on track.

Talent Supply & Workforce

• Workforce Management: Build and manage Mecka’s local workforce: contributors, contractors, field operators, and annotators.

• Talent Lifecycle: Own sourcing, vetting, onboarding, training, and performance management.

• Capacity & Quality: Maintain workforce quality and capacity as program demand scales up and down.

Local Partnerships & Vendor Management

• Vendor Relationships: Build and manage local vendor relationships: facilities, logistics, equipment, staffing partners, recruiting agencies, and university / research partners.

• Contracting & Performance: Negotiate contracts and manage performance.

• Operational Bottlenecks: Identify and resolve local supply chain or operational bottlenecks.

Compliance, Legal & Risk

• Local Compliance: Ensure full compliance with Canadian employment, tax, data protection (PIPEDA / provincial privacy laws), and operating regulations across relevant provinces.

• HQ Partnership: Partner with HQ Legal, Finance, and HR on local entity setup, contracts, and policy.

• Risk Ownership: Own local risk management: regulatory, fraud, security, and continuity.

Customer & Stakeholder Representation

• Local Representation: Be the local face of Mecka to customers, partners, regulators, and the community.

• Customer Visits & Events: Host customer visits and represent Mecka at local industry events when relevant.

• Market Intelligence: Surface local market intelligence back to HQ — what's working, what's changing, what's next.

Country Success Metrics

• Team Strength: A strong, stable in-country team led by managers you hired and developed.

• Delivery Metrics: Country-level delivery metrics — throughput, quality, on‑time, cost — meeting or beating global standards.

• Program Delivery: All cus