About the Role
Snorkel AI is hiring Forward Deployed Researchers who will partner with frontier AI labs on their most challenging data problems. This is a high-impact, customer-facing role that combines deep technical and research credibility with strong presales instincts. You'll partner with customer research teams to design complex data and environments that improve frontier model performance, serving as a thought partner throughout the engagement.
You'll work at the critical intersection of research, technical strategy, and customer partnership. This includes scoping training data needs, designing RL environments and tasks, developing evaluation frameworks, probing model behavior and failure modes, and translating customer research objectives into actionable technical plans.
Main Responsibilities
- Partner with frontier AI research labs to design datasets and environments that improve model performance
- Lead technical conversations with customer researchers to understand model capabilities, failure modes, data requirements, and success criteria
- Probe model behavior through systematic evaluation to uncover weaknesses and identify high-impact data interventions
- Design evaluation frameworks, calibration processes, and quality rubrics that establish measurable project success metrics
- Develop technical specifications for data projects that balance research rigor with operational feasibility
- Serve as thought partner to customer research teams throughout the sales cycle, building trust and credibility
- Stay current on frontier AI research, RL environment design, post-training techniques, and evaluation methodologies
Preferred Qualifications
- Strong expertise in frontier AI concepts including LLMs, training data pipelines, evaluation methodologies, post-training techniques (RLHF, DPO, RLAIF), and domain areas such as coding agents, reasoning, multimodal models, or RL environments
- Experience in applied ML research, data science, or research-intensive technical roles
- Customer-facing or collaborative research experience, or demonstrated aptitude for client engagement
- Proficiency in Python and familiarity with ML frameworks and LLM APIs
- Excellent communication skills, ability to deliver technical presentations and explain complex concepts to diverse audiences
- Familiarity with data curation workflows, synthetic data generation, LLM-as-a-Judge, or evaluation framework design
- 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