Forward Deployed Research Engineer
About the Role
This is a hands-on, end-to-end ownership role on a small, high-caliber engineering team building infrastructure for AI evaluation and reinforcement learning environments. You'll be the person who unblocks critical deployments for frontier AI labs and data vendors - diagnosing ambiguous problems fast, shipping solutions, and turning repeated firefighting into durable tooling. The work is urgent, impactful, and rarely fully prescribed.
What You'll Do
Take the lead on diagnosing and resolving ambiguous technical problems as they arise.
Own technical deployment requests from frontier AI labs and data vendors, from initial triage through to completion.
Ask the right questions to clarify underspecified asks and identify what actually needs to be built.
Build one-off tools and pipelines to solve urgent customer or partner problems quickly.
Coordinate with research and go-to-market teams to keep deployments moving.
Balance speed and quality under time pressure when the path forward isn't fully defined.
Document recurring issues and convert repeated manual work into reusable tools and processes.
What We're Looking For
2-4 years of experience in applied research engineering, forward-deployed engineering, or a closely related hands-on technical role.
Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.
Experience working on benchmarks and evals - with solid judgment about task realism, rubric reliability, and trajectory quality for RL training.
Strong debugging instincts across code, data, and environments.
Proven ability to operate independently in ambiguous situations without a fully prescribed roadmap.
Comfort working directly with technical customers, vendors, and cross-functional internal teams.
Experience handling urgent production, customer, or deployment issues under pressure.
Early-stage startup experience and the ability to move fast in a small, high-ownership environment.
Strong written and verbal communication skills for async, cross-timezone collaboration.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $150,000 - $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA, USA. Candidates based in or able to relocate to San Francisco are preferred. The role may also be based in Singapore.