Forward deployed AI engineer

Toloka AI creates data that powers GenAI models and innovations. It combines experts, a global crowd, and a technology platform to teach AI models to reason and evaluate their efficacy and safety.

• Act as the primary technical counterpart to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and research and engineering leaders
• Lead executive conversations using a structured, answer-first (BLUF) approach
• Manage escalations and expectations with composure and integrity
• Build long-term trusted relationships by recommending evidence-based solutions
• Ask questions to uncover clients’ underlying needs, understand their models, target metrics, and training or evaluation plans
• Use knowledge of LLM training and fine-tuning to understand clients’ data strategies and propose data solutions with options and rationale
• Design and build data solutions, configure data-labeling components and quality controls, develop user interfaces and AI-driven solutions, and integrate them into automated, multi-stage pipelines for AI training and evaluation
• Architect complex, multi-stage solutions end to end, run experiments to validate data quality and speed, and iterate from MVP toward production
• Provide technical leadership across client engagements, establish reusable engineering standards and best practices, and mentor Solution Engineers and Technical Consultants
• Own end-to-end delivery, including timelines, quality, scalability, Gross Margin, and Contribution Margin; identify levers, trade-offs, and next checkpoints
• Identify and drive expansion opportunities

• Communicate clearly, concisely, persuasively, and calmly with executives and senior technical stakeholders
• Understand modern LLM training, fine-tuning, and evaluation, including SFT, RLHF/RLAIF, DPO/PPO, reward modeling, and LoRA/PEFT
• Have hands-on experience designing complex AI solutions, building multi-stage pipelines, and developing AI-driven systems such as agentic workflows, RAG, or synthetic data generation
• Be comfortable with Python, NumPy, Pandas, API integration, and independently prototyping LLM-powered solutions
• Understand version control, testing, MVP thinking, and iterative development
• Have 8+ years of experience delivering complex AI, ML, or data projects end to end, with experience influencing technical direction beyond individual projects
• Take responsibility for outcomes, make thoughtful trade-offs between time, cost, and quality, and own technical and commercial success
• Have professional English at C1+ level
• Будет плюсом: production software development experience, experience establishing engineering standards, mentoring engineers, or leading cross-functional technical initiatives, top-tier strategy consulting experience (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) and/or applied ML or LLM engineering experience, hands-on LLM training or fine-tuning and/or agentic systems experience, an MSc or PhD in AI, CS, or a related field, crowdsourcing and/or data-centric AI experience, fast-paced multi-project delivery for frontier AI clients

• Freelance (B2B) collaboration, with a path into a project team if things go well
• Flexible schedule, 40 hours per week
• Work on projects with leading AI customers alongside a dedicated team of experts
• Friendly community