Forward Deployed Researcher Director, Snorkel AI
Data as a Service
$228-403.2k
+ Variable and equity also available for this role
The AI data research lab
Open for applications
The AI data research lab
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$228-403.2k
+ Variable and equity also available for this role
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To empower everyone to solve their most impactful problems through data-centric AI.
Role
Who you are
- The right person for this role can hold their own with frontier AI researchers, has strong presales instincts, and wants to build a team
- 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
What the job involves
- Snorkel AI is hiring a Director on the AI Solutions Engineering, DaaS 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
- Recruit, hire, and develop AI Solutions 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
Our take
Demand for AI is increasing in almost every industry, but the machine learning that fuels it is tedious to set up. In order to train machine learning algorithms, training data must be labelled manually, and this contributes to expenses in time, money and resources when integrating AI within a business.
Snorkel AI develops programmatic approaches to data labelling in order to automate the setup process of machine learning and decrease the required timeframe for a business to begin providing AI services. In addition to these automated data categorization services, the company also integrates data training, management, and analysis into a unified AI-deployment platform.
The complex computer science behind AI setup has resulted in many businesses without computer science backgrounds being left behind, and Snorkel AI has set this as their target audience. And recently, the company raised some serious funding which it plans to use to expand the company's engineering, research, and go-to-market efforts.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-13% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
May 2025
$100m
SERIES D
Aug 2021
$85m
SERIES C
Total funding: $235m
Company benefits
- Health: Snorkelers and their dependents are covered by comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans.
- Wellness: All Snorkelers get a yearly wellness stipend to use on anything related to health and well-being.
- PTO and rest days: We provide unlimited personal time off so you can find your work-life balance. Plus, two company-wide rest days per quarter in addition to company holidays.
- One global team: From our headquarters in Redwood City, CA, to regional offices in San Francisco and New York, we work together as one global team.
- Events: Get to know your fellow Snorkelers outside of work! We host regular events and learning opportunities for our teams across our offices and virtually to connect, have fun, and grow.
- Family leave: Snorkel offers generous parental leave for both birthing and non-birthing parents based on eligibility.
Company HQ
Centennial, Redwood City, CA
Leadership
Alex Ratner
(Co-Founder & CEO)Studied at Harvard and received a PhD from Stanford. They are also an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.
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