Head of AI Data Pipelines & Forward-Deployed Engineering

FDE Times; New York (NY); On-site; USD 269,000 - 403,000; Full time

Job summary

Snorkel AI is seeking a deeply technical leader to head the Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization. You will shape the function, drive execution, and manage rapid growth from 40 to 100+ engineers, building reusable data pipelines and ML environments for top research labs and enterprises.

You will own the architecture and delivery of data pipelines, evaluation, and verification, ensuring quality and cost efficiency across teams, with a strategic focus on LLM stacks, orchestration, and

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software or ML engineering, including 5+ years leading multiple teams as a manager of managers.
• Experience scaling an engineering organization of ~100 engineers, owning team planning, strategy, and alignment with company needs.
• Background in ML infrastructure or data platforms is strongly preferred.
• Experience building and shipping AI/ML systems to production, with automated verification to decide what’s good enough to ship.
• Track record of hiring and scaling engineering teams through hypergrowth.
• Deep technical fluency: architecture reviews and meaningful design changes, not just management.
• Direct experience with LLM application stacks, including agents, orchestration, and LLM-based pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale the FDE organization: set the vision, define the operating model and org design, and align team plans with company priorities.
• Drive hiring in hypergrowth: build a strong bench of engineering managers and tech leads, scaling to 100+ engineers.
• Coach EMs and TLMs to grow from single-project ownership to cross-team leadership.
• Drive reuse across the organization by identifying patterns and scaling first versions across platforms.
• Set engineering standards for pipeline design, data evaluation, delivery sign-off, and root cause analysis.
• Own pipeline cost and performance, including token and compute costs, throughput, and latency targets.
• Review architecture designs and propose changes to improve quality and cost efficiency.
• Plan capacity with shifting priorities while preserving delivery commitments.

Skills

Engineering leadership

ML engineering

LLM stacks

Hiring in hypergrowth

System architecture

Customer accountability

Tools

Automation verification

Job description

Snorkel AI is seeking a deeply technical leader to head the Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization. You will shape the function, drive execution, and manage rapid growth from 40 to 100+ engineers, building reusable data pipelines and ML environments for top research labs and enterprises.

You will own the architecture and delivery of data pipelines, evaluation, and verification, ensuring quality and cost efficiency across teams, with a strategic focus on LLM stacks, orchestration, and