RL Engineer

San Francisco, United States
Full-time
Visa Sponsorship

About the role

About AfterQuery

AfterQuery builds the training data and evaluation infrastructure that frontier AI labs use to make their models better. We work with the world's leading labs to design high signal datasets and run rigorous evaluations that go beyond static benchmarks. We are a small, early team (post Series A) where individual contributors have a direct impact on how the next generation of models learn and improve.

The Role

As a SWE (Environments), you will design the datasets and evaluation rubrics that directly influence how frontier models learn. You'll work hands-on with research teams at top AI labs, experimenting with data collection strategies, diagnosing model failure modes, and developing the metrics that determine whether a model is actually improving. You'll go from hypothesis to live experiment quickly, and your output will feed directly into model training runs at scale.

Day to day, you will design data slices that expose meaningful failure modes across domains like finance, code, and enterprise workflows. You will build and refine reward signals for RLHF and RLVR pipelines. You will develop quantitative frameworks for measuring dataset quality, diversity, and downstream impact on alignment and capability. You will partner with lab research teams to translate their training objectives into concrete data and evaluation specifications.

What You'll Do

  • Design data slides and explore data shapes that expose meaningful model failure modes across domains like finance, code, and enterprise workflows
  • Build and refine evaluation rubrics and reward signals for RLHF and RLVR training pipelines
  • Model annotator behavior and run experiments to improve different model capabilities
  • Develop quantitative frameworks for measuring dataset quality, diversity, and downstream impact on model alignment and capability
  • Create and manage both real world & synthetic data pipelines
  • Partner with lab research teams to translate their training objectives into concrete data and evaluation specifications

About AfterQuery

Applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development.

Required skills

Python
TypeScript
Reinforcement Learning (RL)
AWS

Other roles at AfterQuery

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Job details

Salary

$260,000 - $290,000

Location

San Francisco, United States

Experience

2+ years

Company

NameAfterQuery
IndustryInfrastructure
Team Size30

Funding

Total raised

$34M

Last stage

Series A

Investors

Altos Ventures
Y Combinator
BoxGroup
TThe Raine Group

Founders

Danny Tang

Danny Tang

LinkedIn
Carlos Georgescu

Carlos Georgescu

LinkedIn
Spencer Mateega

Spencer Mateega

LinkedIn

What happens next.

No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.

01

Confirm the fit

A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.

02

I pitch you to the company

I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.

03

A meeting lands on your calendar

If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.