Research Engineer, Synthetic Data

Clera

$150K — $250K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 2-4 years of relevant engineering experience
  • Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments
  • Hands-on experience with synthetic data research methods
  • Strong intuition for evaluating quality and limitations of synthetic data
  • Proven ability to independently build synthetic data pipelines
  • Experience with environments, evaluations, and benchmarks
  • Detail-oriented mindset for identifying inconsistencies in data
  • Ability to conceptualize task design from first principles

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain the synthetic data pipeline for AI training tasks
  • Collaborate with experts to design high-quality synthetic tasks
  • Design methods for scalable, diverse, and realistic synthetic data generation
  • Develop tooling for validating and improving synthetic tasks
  • Analyze model performance to assess synthetic tasks' effectiveness
  • Create metrics to evaluate task diversity, realism, and learnability

Benefits

  • Visa sponsorship available
  • Equity participation in a well-funded, early-stage AI company
Full Job Description
About the Role

In this role, you'll own the synthetic data pipeline end-to-end: transforming domain-specific workflows into structured, realistic, and challenging training tasks for AI agents. You'll work directly with subject-matter experts, design generation and validation systems, and develop the metrics that tell us whether synthetic tasks are actually teaching models what we want.
What You'll Do
  • Build and maintain the synthetic data pipeline, turning domain-specific workflows into realistic, structured, and challenging training tasks for AI agents.
  • Collaborate with subject-matter experts across professional and technical domains to design high-quality synthetic tasks.
  • Design synthetic task generation methods that produce diverse, realistic, and learnable data at scale.
  • Build tooling to mutate, validate, and iteratively improve synthetic tasks.
  • Analyze model and agent performance on synthetic tasks to understand what they teach and where they break down.
  • Develop metrics to quantify synthetic task diversity, realism, learnability, and overall quality.
What We're Looking For

Required
  • 2-4 years of relevant engineering experience.
  • Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.
  • Hands-on experience with synthetic data research methods.
  • Strong intuition for what makes synthetic data "good" - and an honest understanding of its limitations.
  • Demonstrated ability to build synthetic data pipelines end-to-end without a fully prescribed roadmap.
  • Experience working with environments, evaluations, and benchmarks.
  • Detail-oriented mindset for spotting subtle inconsistencies and edge cases in synthetic data.
  • Ability to reason from first principles about task design, scoring functions, and failure modes.
  • Comfort thriving in unstructured, early-stage environments where you define the path forward.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for async, cross-timezone collaboration.

Nice to Have
  • Background in reinforcement learning or post-training data for large language models.
  • Experience building reward signals, graders, or automated QA systems for agent tasks.
  • Prior work at an early-stage AI or ML startup.
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $150,000 - $250,000 USD annually, depending on experience.
  • Visa sponsorship: Available.
  • Equity participation in a well-funded, early-stage AI company.
Location

This is an on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. We work together in person - candidates should be prepared to be in the office regularly. Remote arrangements are not available for this position.

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Clera

  • Head of Growth
    $150K — $180K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Enterprise Technology
    In-Person
  • Research Engineer, Synthetic Data
    $150K — $250K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Consumer Technology
    In-Person
  • Research Engineer
    $150K — $250K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Information Technology
    In-Person
  • Customer Operations Lead
    $100K — $150K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Consumer Technology
    In-Person
  • Research Engineer, Benchmarks
    $150K — $250K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Information Technology
    In-Person

More Consumer Technology Jobs

Find similar Research Engineer, Synthetic Data jobs: