Senior/Staff FDE - CUA
Onsite: US New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)
Why we labeled it Onsite
Skills: Python, LLM, Reinforcement learning, Fine-tuning, Evals, Agents, Data pipelines
Location field: "New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)" (not marked remote)Salary: $180,000–$320,000
Skills: Python, LLM, Reinforcement learning, Fine-tuning, Evals, Agents, Data pipelines
About Snorkel
Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes.
Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!
About the Role
Snorkel AI is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer focused on Computer Use Agents to partner with leading AI labs and enterprises on their most critical agentic-AI initiatives.
In this role, you will lead the technical execution of complex customer engagements involving agents that operate computers, browsers, and software environments to complete realistic, multi-step tasks. You will translate ambiguous product and model challenges into robust task environments, datasets, evaluators, and delivery plans that improve agent reliability and downstream performance.
You will work across the full delivery lifecycle—from technical discovery and solution design through implementation, evaluation, and production delivery. You will also identify patterns across engagements and turn successful approaches into reusable capabilities, technical standards, and product improvements.
Main Responsibilities
Computer Use Agents, Data, and Evaluation
Design and build task environments, datasets, and evaluation workflows for computer-using agents operating across browsers, desktop applications, terminals, and other software interfaces
Translate customer goals, agent failure modes, and real-world workflows into representative, multi-step tasks with clear success criteria
Develop data-generation, validation, and quality-assurance pipelines for multimodal and agentic training and evaluation data
Build automated evaluators, checks, and measurement frameworks to assess task completion, correctness, robustness, efficiency, and adherence to requirements
Diagnose agent failures across planning, tool use, perception, state management, and interaction with user interfaces; turn findings into improved tasks, data, and evaluations
Design and run experiments to measure how data, task design, and evaluation changes affect downstream agent performance
Deliver reusable, production-grade task suites, datasets, and evaluation assets that help customers train, benchmark, and improve computer-use agents
Forward Deployed Engineering & Customer Partnership
Lead technical workstreams from initial solution design through production delivery, navigating ambiguity and making sound technical decisions
Build, refine, and iterate on solutions that address customer needs, incorporating feedback to ensure the delivered work provides tangible value
Rapidly prototype and productionize solutions across models, agent frameworks, APIs, browser or desktop environments, and custom applications
Communicate technical tradeoffs, experimental results, and recommendations clearly to technical and cross-functional stakeholders
Serve as a trusted technical partner to customers and internal delivery teams, resolving complex blockers and driving alignment
Technical Leadership & Scale
Identify recurring patterns across customer engagements and turn successful solutions into reusable task frameworks, evaluators, tooling, and best practices
Define and improve technical standards for agent task design, environment reliability, evaluation, and delivery
Partner with DaaS Engineering, Research, and Product teams to influence platform and product capabilities based on real-world customer needs
Lead technical design reviews, share expertise, and provide guidance to other engineers
Stay current with emerging agentic-AI, computer-use, evaluation, and data-curation techniques and assess their applicability to customer problems
What We're Looking For
5+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, software engineering, applied AI, forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or a similar technical role
Strong Python skills and experience building reliable production software, data, or ML systems
Hands-on experience building, evaluating, or deploying LLM-based or agentic systems, including computer-use agents (CUA)
Strong understanding of experimentation and evaluation, including LLM-as-a-judge / model-based evaluation, defining metrics, and using empirical results to guide technical decisions
Experience designing task environments, datasets, and verifiers for agents, including reward & verifier design (RL with verifiable rewards)
Experience building or working with APIs, automation, web applications, browser-based systems, desktop applications, or developer tools
Experience manipulating, analyzing, and validating large or complex datasets using Python and the modern GenAI/LLM stack
Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous technical problems from problem definition through implementation and delivery
Strong technical communication skills and experience working directly with customers or cross-functional stakeholders
Demonstrated experience setting technical direction, creating reusable approaches across projects, and influencing broader engineering or product decisions
Preferred Qualifications
Experience developing agent benchmarks, task suites, or simulators
Experience with multimodal models, visual grounding, or evaluating agents that interact with graphical user interfaces
Experience with repo-scale agentic coding tasks, agent tool protocols & interop, or productized browser/computer-use agents
Experience building data pipelines for fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, preference optimization, benchmarking, or model evaluation
Experience working in fast-paced, customer-facing environments where requirements and technical approa