Frontier AI Researcher - Data & Evaluation Partner

Snorkel; California, Northern (MO, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Dental coverage

Equity grants

Job summary

Snorkel AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Researcher who partners with frontier AI labs to tackle complex data problems, design RL environments, and translate research goals into actionable plans. This is a customer-facing role that blends deep technical credibility with real-world impact.

You will define data needs, develop evaluation frameworks, and collaborate across research and engineering to improve model performance while balancing research rigor and operational feasibility.

Qualifications

• Strong expertise in frontier AI, LLMs, data pipelines, and evaluation methodologies.
• Experience in applied ML research or research-intensive technical roles.
• Customer-facing or collaborative research experience or aptitude for client engagement.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks; comfortable running evaluations in containerized environments.
• Excellent communication skills for presenting to diverse audiences.
• Familiarity with data curation workflows, synthetic data generation, LLM-as-a-Judge, or evaluation framework design.
• Willingness to make defensible assumptions when a request is underspecified, rather than waiting for the customer to close the gap.
• Ability to work in a fast-moving environment with ambiguity and rapid iteration.
• BS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field with 4+ years of experience; advanced degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Own a technical domain end to end and determine what to build next.
• Partner with frontier AI labs to design datasets and environments that improve model performance.
• Lead technical conversations with customer researchers to understand capabilities, failure modes, data requirements, and success criteria.
• Probe model behavior through systematic evaluation to uncover weaknesses and data interventions.
• Benchmark frontier models against our datasets and provide 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.
• Manage demand shape for your domain with labs and volume estimates.
• Develop a point of view on domain direction with Research on what should exist before a customer asks for it.
• Serve as thought partner to customer research teams throughout the sales cycle.
• Stay current on frontier AI research, RL environment design, post-training techniques, and evaluation methodologies.

Skills

Frontier AI

LLMs

Data pipelines

Evaluation methods

Post-training methods

Coding agents

Python

LLM APIs

Containerized environments

Communication skills

Data curation

Synthetic data

Evaluation design

Education

BS in CS/ML or related

Tools

Python

ML frameworks

LLM APIs

Containerization

Job description

Snorkel AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Researcher who partners with frontier AI labs to tackle complex data problems, design RL environments, and translate research goals into actionable plans. This is a customer-facing role that blends deep technical credibility with real-world impact.

You will define data needs, develop evaluation frameworks, and collaborate across research and engineering to improve model performance while balancing research rigor and operational feasibility.