Director, Research - Frontier Benchmarks

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.