Forward Deployed Research Engineer

HUD; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision benefits

Meals in office

Holiday break: Christmas Eve to New Y

Equinox membership

401k

Commuter benefits

Unlimited AI tokens access

Job summary

HUD is seeking an Applied Research Engineer to own implementation, troubleshooting, and evaluation tasks for frontier AI collaborations. You will diagnose ambiguous problems, run evals, and clean data at scale.

The right candidate is a strong generalist AI engineer who can move quickly and work closely with frontier labs and data vendors. You will lead deployment requests, clarify needs, build pipelines, and coordinate with research and GTM teams to unblock deployments.

Qualifications

• Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.
• Strong debugging instincts across code, data, and environments.
• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous situations without a fully prescribed roadmap.
• Comfort working with technical customers, vendors, or cross‑functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Own deployment requests from frontier labs, data vendors, and internal teams from triage to completion.
• Ask the right questions to clarify ambiguous asks and identify what actually needs to be done.
• Build tools and pipelines to solve urgent customer problems.
• Coordinate with research and GTM teams to unblock deployments.
• Balance speed and quality when customers need fast turnaround with incomplete specs.
• Document recurring issues and turn manual work into reusable tools or processes.

Skills

Python

Debugging

Independent work

Ambiguity navigation

AI generalist

Tools

Docker

Linux

Job description

About HUD

HUD is building infrastructure to create RL training data and evals for frontier AI agents, as well as a marketplace to sell these to frontier labs through the HUD marketplace. Our platform is used by frontier labs, Fortune 500 companies, and startups. We’ve raised $16M from top VCs and were YC W25.

About the role

We’re looking for an Applied Research Engineer to own implementation. Our data buyers and sellers often have time-sensitive asks such as troubleshooting and running evals or cleaning data at scale. You’ll take the lead on diagnosing ambiguous technical problems and resolving them. This work is broad and hands‑on – the right fit is a strong generalist AI engineer who can move quickly and wants to work closely with frontier AI labs and data vendors.

Responsibilities

• Own technical deployment requests from frontier AI labs, data vendors, and internal teams from triage to completion
• Ask the right questions to clarify ambiguous asks and identify what actually needs to be done
• Build tools and one-off pipelines to solve urgent customer or partner problems
• Coordinate with research and GTM teams to unblock deployments
• Balance speed and quality in situations where customers need fast turnaround and the path is not fully specified
• Document recurring issues and turn repeated manual work into reusable tools or processes

Experience

You may be a good fit if you have:

• Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments
• Experience working on benchmarks and evals – you can reason about what makes a task realistic, a rubric reliable, an environment usable, and a trajectory useful for RL training
• Strong debugging instincts across code, data, and environments
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently in ambiguous situations without a fully prescribed roadmap
• Strong judgment about when to move fast, when to elevate, and when correctness or security requires extra care
• Comfort working directly with technical customers, vendors, or cross‑functional internal teams

Strong candidates may also have:

• Experience in applied research engineering or forward‑deployed engineering
• Experience handling urgent production, customer, or deployment issues
• Early‑stage startup experience with ability to work independently in fast‑paced environments
• Strong communication skills for remote collaboration across time zones

We prioritize technical aptitude and learning potential over years of experience. Motivated candidates are encouraged to apply even if they don't meet all criteria.

Team & company details

• Team Size: ~15 people currently, mostly full‑time in‑person, but some remote.
• Our team: Our team includes 4 International Olympiad medalists (IOI, ILO, IPhO), serial AI startup founders, and researchers with publications at ICLR, NeurIPS, etc.
• Company stage: We have 8 figures in funding and high revenue growth. We’re scaling profitably and quickly to meet very strong demand.

Logistics

• Employment: Full‑time.
• Location: On‑site only, for now. You can join the team in the San Francisco Bay Area or Singapore offices.
• Visa Sponsorship: We provide support for relocation and visas for strong full‑time candidates to the US or Singapore.
• Timeline: Applications are rolling. The process is 2 technical interviews and a 2‑3 day work trial.

What we offer

• Competitive compensation
• 100% covered top‑of‑the‑line medical, dental, and vision from Blue Shield of CA (US employees)
• Lunch and dinner when you’re in the office
• Company‑wide holiday break (Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day) on top of PTO and paid holidays
• Other perks including an Equinox membership, 401k, and commuter benefits (US employees)
• Unlimited access to tokens for ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, etc. By unlimited, we mean no one on our token usage leaderboard has ever hit a limit. So we have no idea what the limit is.

Due to high volume, we may not actively respond to every application, but feel free to contact us at [e-mail] or elsewhere if we missed your application!