About the RoleJoin a small, high-caliber engineering team at a fast-moving AI infrastructure company building the platform for reinforcement learning (RL) environments and post-training data. As a
Forward Deployed Research Engineer, you will own end-to-end implementation for urgent, ambiguous technical challenges facing frontier AI labs and data vendors. Your work will directly unblock critical deployments and transform repeated firefighting into reusable tooling - with real impact from day one.
This is an on-site role based in
San Francisco, CA, with visa sponsorship available.
What You'll Do- Take the lead on diagnosing and resolving ambiguous technical problems quickly and independently.
- Own technical deployment requests from frontier AI labs, data vendors, and internal teams - from triage through to completion.
- Ask the right questions to clarify under-specified asks and identify what actually needs to be done.
- Build tools and one-off pipelines to solve urgent customer or partner problems.
- Coordinate with research and go-to-market teams to unblock deployments.
- Balance speed and quality in high-pressure situations where the path forward is not fully defined.
- Document recurring issues and convert repeated manual work into reusable tools or processes.
What We're Looking ForRequired (dealbreakers):- 2-4 years of experience as an Applied Research Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or in a comparable hands-on technical role.
- Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.
- Experience working on benchmarks and evals for RL training data and AI agents - with sound judgment about what makes a task realistic, a rubric reliable, and a trajectory useful for RL training.
Strong requirements:- Demonstrated experience owning technical deployment requests from triage to completion.
- Ability to build tools and one-off pipelines under time pressure.
- Strong debugging instincts across code, data, and environments.
- 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 documenting issues and automating manual work into reusable processes.
Nice to have:- Prior experience at an early-stage startup.
- Experience handling urgent production or customer-facing deployment issues.
- Strong communication skills for cross-timezone remote collaboration.
Compensation & Benefits- Salary: $150,000 - $250,000 USD annually, depending on experience.
- Visa sponsorship: Available.
LocationThis is an
on-site role based in
San Francisco, CA, United States. Candidates based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco are strongly preferred. There is also an office presence in
Singapore.
