Scale's St. Louis AI Center: A Blueprint for America's AI Workforce

Scale AI is fueling the public sector’s use of AI, serving as the engine for building, deploying, and evaluating AI across the U.S. government. America’s national security depends on equipping our government with the best AI tools and data infrastructure. This requires investing in both cutting-edge technology as well as a talented national workforce. Our AI Center in St. Louis provides a model for how advancing the United States’ AI capabilities brings new career opportunities for Americans eager to break into a career in tech.

Scale’s St. Louis AI Center demonstrates how investment in AI creates high-tech jobs for Americans from diverse backgrounds to support U.S. national security. This center was originally created three years ago to label geospatial AI training data. This data is used to improve AI models used by our government to analyze vast amounts of information collected by satellites, drones, and other sensors. Today, Scale’s AI Center provides work to hundreds of data labeling specialists who have produced tens of millions of high-quality geospatial data annotations, which fuel the systems used by government leaders making mission-critical decisions. The AI Center also recently expanded into generative AI. This involves training AI models to communicate clearly using military terminology. Together, this work enhances the performance of AI systems and equips our deployed forces around the world with a technological edge to help them stay safe and effective.

Scale is committed to ensuring the U.S. government has the world’s most advanced AI technology. One example of the center’s work is a free dataset Scale created in 2022 for our national security partners to generate more accurate building damage assessments during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the dataset received TIME’s “Best Inventions” award in 2022. At a time when the United States’ competitors are investing heavily in advancing their own AI capabilities, our nation’s AI systems remain bottle-necked by our ability to produce high-quality data. The demand is growing for AI workforces that can refine the data we need to train and update the U.S. government’s AI models. Our St. Louis center is one example of how that demand leads to quality work for Americans across the country. 

As Scale has learned from our center in St. Louis, this demand is also creating a new category of jobs that requires unique skill sets. The majority of our work at the AI Center focuses on “cracking the code” of complicated geospatial data, and it rewards complex pattern-matching abilities and a high attention to detail. Most of our St. Louis workforce comes from non-traditional backgrounds, like baristas, artists, and nurses. A portion of our workforce also includes military veterans who sought out Scale to continue to serve our nation after their time in uniform. Regardless of their backgrounds, our AI center workers develop the ability to analyze multiple data types through advanced training and instruction from geospatial experts with decades of experience. 

Scale’s work also offers people a chance to build careers in a high-tech field. As our workforce at the AI Center has grown, so has the need for managerial and specialized roles. Two-thirds of our current workforce have advanced beyond their initial entry-level positions. Alex, an operations manager, joined in an entry-level role two years ago and has now earned four promotions to her current role. Now that Scale also supports classified work for the U.S. government, we have also enabled more than one hundred team members to receive security clearances. This credential allows them to work on some of the most pressing national security challenges even beyond their roles at Scale.

This work is strengthening communities by bringing new investment into local businesses, as our AI Center is fully integrated into the St. Louis business and geospatial communities. For example, we joined the Rung for Women Employer Network, an organization that helps local women build careers in high-opportunity industries. Scale’s AI Center is also partnering with the following St. Louis-based small businesses including:

• Chameleon Integrated Services, a minority-owned small business

• Mark One Solutions, a service disabled veteran-owned small business

• Hopewell Enterprises, a woman-owned, minority-owned small business 

As St. Louis’ Mayor Tishaura Jones said, “We’re fortunate that Scale has those entry-level opportunities for people to get into tech…If a mayor from another city called me and asked whether Scale should expand to their community, I’d say absolutely. We’re trying to provide the environment for companies like Scale to thrive and grow.”

As we continue to partner with public sector leaders in advancing our nation’s AI capabilities, we are proud to support the United States’ emerging AI workforce.