Director, Forward Deployed Researcher - Data as a Service

About Snorkel

At Snorkel, we believe meaningful AI doesn’t start with the model, it starts with the data.

We’re on a mission to help enterprises transform expert knowledge into specialized AI at scale. The AI landscape has gone through incredible changes since 2015, when Snorkel started as a research project in the Stanford AI Lab, to the generative AI breakthroughs of today. But one thing has remained constant: the data you use to build AI is the key to achieving differentiation, high performance, and production-ready systems. We work with some of the world’s largest organizations to empower scientists, engineers, financial experts, product creators, journalists, and more to build custom AI with their data faster than ever before. Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!

About the Role

Snorkel AI is hiring a Director, Forward Deployed Researcher on the Data-as-a-service team. Your team will partner directly with frontier AI labs on their hardest data problems: scoping training data needs, designing RL environments, developing evaluation frameworks, and translating customer research objectives into actionable technical plans.

This is a player-coach role. Roughly half your time goes to people leadership (hiring, coaching, developing your team) and the other half to hands-on technical work on strategic accounts. You set the technical bar for spec quality and build the playbooks and processes that let the team scale. You influence how the function operates, from process and standards to team culture.

You partner closely with AE leadership on pipeline strategy, account coverage, and SE allocation. You also work cross-functionally with Delivery, Research, and Engineering to ensure smooth handoffs. The right person for this role can hold their own with frontier AI researchers, has strong presales instincts, and wants to build a team.

Main Responsibilities

Recruit, hire, and develop the forward deployed research team, coaching the team on technical quality, customer engagement, and career growth

Set and maintain the technical bar for specifications, evaluation frameworks, and customer deliverables

Own SE capacity planning and account coverage; partner with AE leadership on deal strategy, engagement prioritization, and pipeline forecasting

Establish team processes and playbooks for discovery, spec development, and knowledge sharing

Lead technical conversations on select strategic accounts, including scoping, solution design, and partnership with frontier AI research teams

Serve as escalation point for technically complex or high-stakes customer situations

Preferred Qualifications

8+ years of experience in applied ML, AI solutions engineering, technical presales, or research-intensive customer-facing roles

5+ years managing or leading technical individual contributors, ideally in a presales or solutions engineering org

Strong expertise in frontier AI concepts including LLMs, training data pipelines, evaluation methodologies, post-training techniques (RLHF, DPO, RLAIF), and domain areas such as coding agents, reasoning, multimodal models, or RL environments

Track record of hiring and developing technical talent

Experience operating against revenue or pipeline goals in a GTM organization

Excellent communication skills, able to coach a team, partner with sales leadership, and engage credibly with frontier AI researchers

Ability to work in a fast-moving environment, comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration

B.S. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field

Be Your Best at Snorkel