Director Image Annotation Jobs in Virginia (NOW HIRING)

Who We Are
Welcome to TELUS Digital - where innovation drives impact at a global scale. As an award-winning digital product consultancy and the digital division of TELUS, one of Canada's largest telecommunications providers, we design and deliver transformative customer experiences through cutting-edge technology, agile thinking, and a people-first culture.
With a global team across North America, South America, Central America, Europe, and APAC, we offer end-to-end expertise across eight core service areas: Digital Product Consulting, Digital Marketing Services, Data & AI, Strategy Consulting, Enterprise Technology, Enterprise Applications, Cloud Engineering, and QA & Test Engineering.
From mobile apps and websites to voice UI, chatbots, AI, customer service, and in-store solutions, TELUS Digital enables seamless, trusted, and digitally powered experiences that meet customers wherever they are - all backed by the secure infrastructure and scale of our multi-billion-dollar parent company.
Location & Flexibility
This role can operate remotely within the US (we are prioritizing candidates based on the US West Coast) OR be based out of one of our major US office locations - Charlottesville, VA, Durham, NC, Columbus, OH, or Boston, MA.
The Opportunity
As Senior Director, Client Accounts for our AI Data Foundry practice, you will lead a high-performing team of Client Account Partners aligned to some of the most influential technology firms in the world. You will be both a people leader and a hands-on client executive, setting the strategic direction for your team while personally owning and deepening relationships within a portfolio of marquee accounts. This role sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data operations, and client success, requiring a strong understanding of the full AI data lifecycle from initial collection and annotation through to validation, fine-tuning, and model evaluation.
Our service offerings span the breadth of what modern AI development demands. On the Generative AI side, we partner with clients to build human-aligned datasets for fine-tuning and evaluating large language models, supporting workflows including Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), red teaming, and bespoke dataset creation across more than 20 domains and 100 languages. For data collection, we leverage a global AI Community of over one million contributors to deliver fully managed, multimodal datasets spanning text, audio, video, image, geo, and 3D data at any scale and complexity. Our data annotation capabilities transform raw, ambiguous data into contextually enriched training assets through advanced labeling services covering image and video, audio, text, and 3D sensor fusion. We also provide rigorous data validation services, ensuring datasets are accurate, relevant, and production-ready through offerings such as search evaluation, ad evaluation, geo-location data verification, and machine translation quality assessment. Rounding out our portfolio, we offer a library of off-the-shelf datasets purpose-built for training and evaluating LLMs, computer vision models, and audio AI systems, providing clients with accessible, cost-effective solutions ready for immediate integration.
The ideal candidate will bring both technical fluency and a client-facing mindset, with the ability to translate complex data requirements into scalable, high-quality solutions that drive measurable outcomes for AI development initiatives.
Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Client Account Partners focused on industry-leading technology firms, while fostering a culture of accountability, curiosity, and client-first thinking.
• Set clear performance expectations and support each team member in building and executing account strategies that drive retention, expansion, and net-new revenue.
• Coach the team on Data-specific solutioning (data collection, data annotation, and data validation), consultative selling, and executive engagement, ensuring they can credibly advise clients on labeling workflows, quality frameworks, and AI training best practices.
• Conduct regular account reviews, pipeline assessments, and deal coaching sessions to maintain forecast accuracy and identify risks or growth opportunities across the portfolio.

Client Account Engagement

• Serve as a senior client account executive and strategic point of escalation for the team's highest-priority and most complex client relationships.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with AI, data science, product, and operations leaders across your portfolio of industry-leading technology firms.
• Lead executive business reviews and strategic planning sessions that align TELUS Digital's capabilities to each client's evolving AI roadmap and data needs.
• Personally drive retention, expansion, and new workstream growth within a defined set of named accounts, demonstrating the same consultative approach expected of your team.
• Act as the voice of the client internally, surfacing insights that influence delivery execution, product development, tooling priorities, and research investments.

Data & AI Expertise & Solutioning

• Develop and maintain deep expertise across TELUS Digital's Data for Generative AI, Data Collection, Data Annotation, Data Validation, and Off-the-Shelf Datasets capabilities, including text, image, video, audio, and sensor data labeling, as well as generative AI data services, agentic AI workflows, and responsible AI practices.
• Guide clients in designing scalable, high-quality data programs that meet the demands of their model training and fine-tuning objectives.
• Partner closely with Solutions Architecture and Delivery teams to develop technically credible, customized proposals that address each client's unique data pipeline requirements.
• Stay ahead of industry trends in AI training data, including emerging labeling methodologies, quality assurance approaches, and the evolving regulatory landscape surrounding responsible AI, and ensure your team is equally well-informed.

Strategy, Forecasting & Operations

• Develop and execute a comprehensive growth strategy for the Client Accounts team, balancing near-term revenue targets with long-term partnership development.
• Maintain rigorous pipeline hygiene, forecast accuracy, and account health reporting using Salesforce.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Delivery, Solutions Architecture, Finance, and Legal teams to ensure seamless client experiences and commercially sound agreements.
• Contribute to practice-level initiatives, including go-to-market strategy, capability messaging, and thought leadership for the AI Data Foundry business.

Competencies
Leadership & Account Management

• 10+ years of F500 client account management and account building experience, with at least 3+ years in a Commercial people leadership role overseeing account teams.
• 3+ years of sales experience in Data Collection, Annotation, and Validation professional services.
• A demonstrated track record of building, coaching, and scaling high-performing teams in a complex, technical services environment.
• Proven ability to manage and grow a portfolio of large, strategic accounts with multiple stakeholders across business units and seniority levels.
• Experience leading executive-level engagements, business reviews, and long-cycle renewals and expansions.

Data & AI Knowledge

• Deep familiarity with data collection, annotation, and validation services, workflows, and quality frameworks across modalities, including text, image, video, audio, and sensor data.
• Strong understanding of how training data supports AI and ML model development, fine-tuning, and evaluation, and the ability to translate that knowledge into client-relevant solutions.
• Comfort discussing generative AI, agentic AI pipelines, and responsible AI principles with both technical and business audiences.
• Experience working with or selling to AI-forward technology companies is strongly preferred.

Skills & Competencies

• Exceptional executive presence and presentation communication skills, with the ability to engage credibly at the C-suite level and inspire confidence within your team.
• A consultative, client-first approach, curious, solutions-oriented, and committed to understanding each client's business before proposing a path forward.
• Proficiency with enterprise sales and account management tools

Equal Opportunity Employer
At TELUS Digital, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. All aspects of employment, including the decision to hire and promote, are based on applicants' qualifications, merits, competence and performance without regard to any characteristic related to diversity.
We will only use the information you provide to process your application and to produce tracking statistics. Since we do not request personal data deemed sensitive, we ask you to abstain from sharing that information with us.
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