VP, Head of Forward Deployed Engineering

Excerpt from the original posting

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 

In this role, you will lead and scale Snorkel’s entire Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization. These are the engineers who design, build, and run the data pipelines used by the world’s leading AI labs and enterprises. You’ll shape the function’s direction, drive its execution, and manage our fastest-growing team as it scales from 40 to 100+ engineers.

You’ll set the technical and organizational strategy that turns one-off implementations into reusable solutions—pipelines, evals, augmentations, and environments—and invest in shared ways of working. In our product lifecycle, FDE sits between Research, which defines novel approaches and training needs, and Engineering, which scales our platform and pipelines from 1 to 100. FDE owns the most important middle stretch, taking every new investment from 0 to 1.

Your organization is responsible for both what we deliver and how we deliver it. Just as Engineering is the final gate for what goes to production, FDE is the final gate for every dataset that ships to a customer. Nothing goes out without your team’s sign-off. You’ll also own the pipelines that produce that data, from cost and throughput to latency and efficiency.

This role is for a deeply technical leader who is, first and foremost, a doer . You’ll understand pipeline architecture well enough to challenge designs and propose direction, while coaching your managers and tech leads to think beyond their individual projects. In a fast-moving market where resourcing shifts often, you’ll be the steady hand who keeps teams focused on what customers actually need, not just what was specified.

Main Responsibilities 

- Lead and scale the FDE organization: set the vision, define the operating model and org design, and align team plans and strategy with company priorities.

- Drive hiring in hypergrowth: build a strong bench of engineering managers and tech leads, and keep the hiring bar high while the organization scale…

→ Snorkel AI · Greenhouse