Lead AI Data Pipelines & Simulation Release Engineer

Merlinlabs; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Unlimited vacation

401(k) with matching

Job summary

Merlin Labs in Boston, MA is seeking a senior data/platform leader to define and own the data strategy for safety-critical autonomous systems, spanning training, simulation, and production deployment.

You will build and maintain end-to-end data pipelines and oversee large-scale GPU/TPU training, mentoring a team of data and infrastructure engineers while partnering with safety, validation, and certification teams.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years in a technical leadership role owning data infrastructure, MLOps, or AI platform engineering at scale.
• Experience building and operating data pipelines for AI/ML model training, including dataset management, labeling workflows, and data versioning at production scale.
• Hands-on experience integrating data systems with large-scale distributed training infrastructure (e.g., GPU/TPU clusters, job orchestration, experiment tracking).
• Deep understanding of simulation pipelines—data-driven, physics-based, or sensor-realistic simulators—and how data quality impacts fidelity and model transferability.
• Experience in safety-critical domains (autonomous vehicles, aviation, robotics) with rigor, traceability, and validation.
• Strong systems-thinking around data quality, pipeline reliability, and infrastructure design.
• Track record of building platforms and tooling relied upon by multiple teams with reliability and developer experience.
• Excellent cross-functional communication translating data strategy to product, safety, and exec stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a comprehensive data strategy spanning AI model training, simulation, and production deployment across safety-critical autonomous systems.
• Own the end-to-end data pipeline—from raw collection and labeling through curation, versioning, and delivery—ensuring reliability and scale.
• Build and maintain data flywheels that improve model performance by closing the loop between deployed behavior and training iterations.
• Collaborate with teams provisioning and operating large-scale GPU/TPU training clusters to align data delivery with compute capacity and schedules.
• Drive data pipelines that feed data-driven, physics-based, and high-fidelity simulators for realistic validation.
• Partner with safety, validation, and certification teams to meet aviation/automotive regulatory data quality standards.
• Lead and mentor a team of data and infrastructure engineers, setting technical direction and fostering rigor and ownership.
• Define and track KPIs for data pipeline health, simulation fidelity, and model readiness; communicate progress to senior leadership.

Skills

Data strategy

MLOps

Data pipelines

Distributed training

Leadership

Education

Advanced degree in CS/ML/related

Tools

GPU/TPU clusters

Experiment tracking

Data versioning

Job description

Merlin Labs in Boston, MA is seeking a senior data/platform leader to define and own the data strategy for safety-critical autonomous systems, spanning training, simulation, and production deployment.

You will build and maintain end-to-end data pipelines and oversee large-scale GPU/TPU training, mentoring a team of data and infrastructure engineers while partnering with safety, validation, and certification teams.