Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training

reflectionai· Applied AI
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📍 New York📍 San FranciscoFullTime

About this role

Our Mission

Reflection’s mission is to build open superintelligence and make it accessible to all.

We’re developing open weight models for individuals, agents, enterprises, and even nation states. Our team of AI researchers and company builders come from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Brain, Meta, Character.AI, Anthropic and beyond.

Role Overview
We're seeking an exceptional technical leader to build and scale Reflection's post-training and evaluation capabilities within the Applied AI team. This team works at the intersection of model adaptation, sovereign deployment, and enterprise deployment: taking Reflection's open-weight models and making them work for specific customer domains, tasks, and constraints. As a Forward Deployed Engineer Lead, Post-Training, you will own the end-to-end technical strategy for model customization, from synthetic data generation and reward modeling through training and production deployment. You will work directly with customers to understand their needs and with research teams to push what's possible with our models.

What You'll Do

  • Lead post-training engagements with enterprise customers: assess their data, define training strategies, design reward signals and verifiers, prepare datasets, run training loops, and evaluate results against customer-specific benchmarks.

  • Design and build RL training environments for model adaptation, including synthetic data generation pipelines, reward model training, and preference data collection workflows.

  • Design and build evaluation infrastructure: define what "better" means for each customer use case, build eval harnesses, curate test sets, and establish baselines that measure real-world performance.

  • Own the data pipeline from raw customer data through training-ready datasets, including synthetic data generation, data quality inspection, cleaning, and format standardization.

  • Deploy post-trained models across hybrid environments (public cloud, VPC, and on-premises), working with infrastructure teams to ensure inference performance, cost efficiency, and reliability at scale.

  • Shape and scale the post-training and evaluation practice by defining playbooks, best practices, and technical standards. Mentor engineers on the team and help define what great applied AI work looks like at Reflection.

What We're Looking For

  • Hands-on post-training experience with large language models at scale. You have built and operated RL training environments, designed preference optimization workflows on models at 50B+ parameter scale, and shipped the results to production.

  • Experience building synthetic data generation pipelines, reward models, and verifiers for reinforcement learning workflows. You've architected the data and feedback loops that make post-training work.

  • Deep understanding of evaluation methodology: how to design evaluations that measure what matters, how to interpret training dynamics, and how to tell the difference between a model that looks good on a benchmark and one that actually works.

  • Practical experience with training infrastructure at scale: comfortable working with multi-node GPU clusters, managing large training runs, debugging distributed training, and optimizing for cost.

  • Strong software engineering fundamentals. You write production-quality code, not just notebooks. Experience with data pipelines, version control for datasets and models, and reproducible workflows.

  • 6+ years of engineering experience, including 2+ years focused on LLM post-training in a leadership capacity (e.g., Tech Lead on a post-training team, Senior MLE owning preference optimization for a product, or Lead Applied Scientist running RL training pipelines in production).

  • Experience in customer-facing technical roles, or a genuine interest in developing this skill. In either case, you are comfortable translating domain requirements into training strategies and delivering measurable outcomes.

  • Self-starter with high agency and ownership, excelling in fast-paced startup environments where playbooks are still being written.

What We Offer:

We believe that to build superintelligence that is truly open, you need to start at the foundation. Joining Reflection means building from the ground up as part of a small talent-dense team. You will help define our future as a company, and help define the frontier of open foundational models.

We want you to do the most impactful work of your career with the confidence that you and the people you care about most are supported.

  • Top-tier compensation: Salary and equity structured to recognize and retain the best talent globally.

  • Health & wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance.

  • Life & family: Fully paid parental leave for all new parents, including adoptive and surrogate journeys. Financial support for family planning.

  • Benefits & balance: paid time off when you need it, relocation support, and more perks that optimize your time.

  • Opportunities to connect with teammates: lunch and dinner are provided daily. We have regular off-sites and team celebrations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the salary disclosed for the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training position at reflectionai?
The salary for this Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training role at reflectionai is not publicly listed. Click "Apply Now" to learn more about the compensation package on their official careers page.
Where is the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training position at reflectionai located?
This Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training role at reflectionai is based in New York, San Francisco. The position is listed as on-site or hybrid. Check the full job description or apply directly to confirm the work arrangement.
Is the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training role at reflectionai full-time or part-time?
This is listed as a FullTime position. It is posted as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training role in the Applied AI department at reflectionai.
Which team or department does the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training at reflectionai belong to?
This Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training position is part of the Applied AI department at reflectionai. See the full job description for more information about the team structure and responsibilities.
How do I apply for the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training position at reflectionai?
Click the "Apply Now" button on this page. You will be redirected to reflectionai's official application portal hosted on ashby where you can submit your application directly.
When was the Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training job at reflectionai posted?
This Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training position at reflectionai was posted on Oct 29, 2025. Apply as soon as possible — early applications are often reviewed first.
Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - LLM Post-training
reflectionai
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