Forward Deployed Researcher - Data as a Service
$160k - $400k • Remote • New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid); United States (Remote)
Posted 1d ago
Job Location
New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid); United States (Remote)
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
Fully remote
Categories
AI Research Engineer
About the job
Snorkel AI is seeking Forward Deployed Researchers to partner with frontier AI labs on challenging data problems. This customer-facing role requires deep technical and research expertise to help design complex data and environments that enhance frontier model performance. You will act as a thought partner, working at the intersection of research, technical strategy, and customer collaboration. Your responsibilities will include scoping training data needs, designing RL environments, developing evaluation frameworks, analyzing model behavior, and translating customer objectives into technical plans.
Responsibilities
- Own a technical domain end-to-end, defining its technical bar and future development.
- Collaborate with frontier AI research labs to design datasets and environments that improve model performance.
- Lead technical discussions with customer researchers to understand model capabilities, failure modes, data needs, and success criteria.
- Analyze model behavior through systematic evaluation to identify weaknesses and high-impact data interventions.
- Benchmark frontier models against datasets to demonstrate value, building or adapting evaluation harnesses and analyzing results.
- Design evaluation frameworks, calibration processes, and quality rubrics to establish measurable project success.
- Develop technical specifications for data projects balancing research rigor with operational feasibility.
- Manage demand for your domain, understanding customer needs and converging requests.
- Develop a strategic point of view for your domain and collaborate with Research on future developments.
- Serve as a thought partner to customer research teams throughout the sales cycle, building trust.
- Stay current on frontier AI research, RL environment design, post-training techniques, and evaluation methodologies.
Requirements
- Strong expertise in frontier AI concepts including LLMs, training data pipelines, evaluation methodologies, and post-training techniques (RLHF, DPO, RLAIF).
- Experience in applied ML research, data science, or research-intensive technical roles.
- Customer-facing or collaborative research experience, or aptitude for client engagement.
- Proficiency in Python, familiarity with ML frameworks and LLM APIs.
- Comfort running evaluations in containerized environments.
- Excellent communication skills, ability to deliver technical presentations and explain complex concepts.
- Familiarity with data curation workflows, synthetic data generation, LLM-as-a-Judge, or evaluation framework design.
- Willingness to make and state defensible assumptions when requests are underspecified.
- Ability to work in a fast-moving environment, comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration.
- B.S. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field with 4+ years of experience in AI/ML research or technical roles; advanced degree preferred.
Benefits
- Health and dental coverage
- Equity grants