Frontier AI Research Partner — Forward Deployed

Snorkel AI; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and dental coverage

Equity grants

Job summary

Snorkel AI is hiring Forward Deployed Researchers to partner with frontier AI labs on challenging data problems. This high-impact, customer-facing role blends deep technical research with collaboration with customer research teams.

You will scope data needs, design RL environments, develop evaluation frameworks, and translate objectives into actionable technical plans. Strong communication and 4+ years in AI/ML research are valued.

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

Responsibilities

• Own a technical domain end to end, defining the bar for what is built and what comes next
• 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
• Benchmark frontier models against our datasets to demonstrate value to customers, building evaluation harnesses as needed
• Turn results into pass-rate analyses, failure-mode breakdowns, and purchase recommendations
• Design evaluation frameworks, calibration processes, and quality rubrics for measurable project success
• Develop technical specifications for data projects balancing research rigor with feasibility
• HANDLE demand shaping for your domain: labs, volume, bar, and converging asks
• Develop a point of view on domain direction and align with Research on forward needs
• Serve as thought partner to customer research teams through the sales cycle
• Stay current on frontier AI research, RL environment design, post-training techniques, and evaluation methodologies

Skills

Frontier AI

LLMs

Training data pipelines

Evaluation methodologies

RLHF

DPO

RLAIF

Coding agents

Reasoning

Multimodal models

RL environments

Python

ML frameworks

LLM APIs

Containerized environments

Education

BS in CS/ML or related field, 4+ years AI/ML experience

Tools

Python

ML frameworks

LLM APIs

Containerized environments

Job description

Snorkel AI is hiring Forward Deployed Researchers to partner with frontier AI labs on challenging data problems. This high-impact, customer-facing role blends deep technical research with collaboration with customer research teams.

You will scope data needs, design RL environments, develop evaluation frameworks, and translate objectives into actionable technical plans. Strong communication and 4+ years in AI/ML research are valued.