Forward Deployed Research Engineer

About the Role

This is a hands-on engineering role at the intersection of applied research and customer deployment, sitting within a small, high-caliber team building infrastructure for RL environments and AI evaluation. You'll own end-to-end resolution of urgent, ambiguous technical challenges for frontier AI labs and data vendors — turning repeated firefighting into durable, reusable tooling.

What You'll Do

• Take the lead on diagnosing and resolving ambiguous technical problems from triage through to completion.

• Own technical deployment requests from frontier AI labs, data vendors, and internal teams.

• Ask the right questions to clarify underspecified asks and identify what actually needs to be done.

• Build one-off tools and pipelines to solve urgent customer or partner problems quickly.

• Coordinate with research and go-to-market teams to unblock critical deployments.

• Balance speed and quality when customers need fast turnaround and the path isn't fully defined.

• Document recurring issues and convert repeated manual work into reusable tools or 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.

• Strong generalist AI engineering skills with a demonstrated ability to move quickly.

• Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.

• Experience working on benchmarks and evals, with sound judgment about what makes a task realistic, a rubric reliable, and a trajectory useful 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, or cross-functional internal teams.

• Experience handling urgent production, customer, or deployment issues under time pressure.

• Early-stage startup experience and comfort in fast-paced, self-directed environments.

• Strong communication skills for remote collaboration across time zones.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $150,000–$250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA, USA. A second office is available in Singapore.