Director, Research - Frontier Benchmarks

Posted 23 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office
325K-450K Annually
Senior level
Artificial Intelligence • Machine Learning
The Role
Lead a research team to design frontier AI datasets and benchmarks, collaborate with academia and industry, define roadmap and dataset quality, support GTM, mentor researchers, and track RL, agentic evaluation, and benchmarking research to improve model performance.
Summary Generated by Built In

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 

We’re looking for a Director to lead a team of researchers designing the datasets that define and advance the frontier of AI. This team sits at the intersection of research, product strategy, and go-to-market. You and the team will collaborate with academic partners, work with researchers at frontier labs, and utilize internal tools for evaluation and error analysis to identify the data, skills and capabilities that will improve model performance. You will uncover gaps in current frontier models and design a wide variety of RL and domain specific benchmarks.  


MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES 

  • Define the process and decide what data we build next by combining market signal from customers and GTM with your team’s read on where frontier labs are headed.
  • Define and own the quality for benchmark design and support GTM in positioning it against existing datasets.
  • Mentor and grow a technical team comfortable with x-functional and customer- facing work, setting a high standard for quality and velocity while staying hands-on yourself. 
  • Foster external and academic collaborations related to our areas of interest 
  • Stay at the frontier: Track new benchmarks, agentic evaluation, and RL training research and tie back to the dataset portfolio we focus on 

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS 

  • 8+ years in applied AI, ML, or research roles, including experience leading or mentoring senior researchers
  • Previous experience building benchmarks and doing data-centric research
  • Experience setting the roadmap and vision for teams and collaborating frequently with the executive team
  • Proven ability to operate cross-functionally  and thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments while managing competing priorities
  • Experience and interest in being customer-facing and translating technical contributions to business impact 
  • Ph.D. in machine learning, NLP, or a related field preferred; equivalent industry or research lab experience considered.

Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Salary range(s) for this role
$325,000$450,000 USD

Be Your Best at Snorkel

Joining Snorkel AI means becoming part of a company that has market proven solutions, robust funding, and is scaling rapidly—offering a unique combination of stability and the excitement of high growth. As a member of our team, you’ll have meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and initiatives, influence key strategic decisions, and directly impact our ongoing success. Whether you’re looking to deepen your technical expertise, explore leadership opportunities, or learn new skills across multiple functions, you’re fully supported in building your career in an environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success.

Snorkel AI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Snorkel AI embraces diversity and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Snorkel AI prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, performance, merit, and business need.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Skills Required

  • 8+ years in applied AI, ML, or research roles, including experience leading or mentoring senior researchers
  • Previous experience building benchmarks and doing data-centric research
  • Experience setting the roadmap and vision for teams and collaborating frequently with the executive team
  • Proven ability to operate cross-functionally and thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments while managing competing priorities
  • Experience and interest in being customer-facing and translating technical contributions to business impact
  • Ph.D. in machine learning, NLP, or a related field preferred; equivalent industry or research lab experience considered

Snorkel AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Snorkel AI and has not been reviewed or approved by Snorkel AI.

  • Healthcare Strength Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans cover employees and dependents, with disability and life insurance included. A yearly wellness stipend supplements core health coverage.
  • Leave & Time Off Breadth Unlimited vacation, paid holidays, and paid sick days are offered. Company-wide rest days are also referenced, expanding time-off support.
  • Parental & Family Support Parental leave for birthing and non-birthing parents and childcare benefits are provided. Flexible work arrangements and remote-friendly perks further support family needs.

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The Company
HQ: Redwood City, CA
120 Employees
Year Founded: 2019

What We Do

Our mission is to empower everyone to solve their most impactful problems through data-centric AI. To do this, we have introduced Snorkel Flow, a data-centric AI platform, and are building an incredibly talented team. We empower Fortune 500 enterprises such as Chubb and BNY Mellon, and several government agencies to accelerate AI application development by 10-100x.

Why Work With Us

The founding team spent over half a decade researching programmatic labeling, weak supervision, and other techniques to break through one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI: the lack of labeled training data. This research has resulted in Snorkel research project and 60+ peer-reviewed publications. Snorkel has developed and deployed its technology

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