Forward Deployed Engineer, Post-Training
Together AI is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer, Post-Training in San Francisco, United States. It pays $270k-$300k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Together AI.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this forward deployed engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Pay on this posting starts 48% higher than the typical forward deployed engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Cursor, Elevenlabs and Decagon among its tools and skills.
- Together AI has 83 other open roles on Level.
- Posted in the last few days.
AI in this role
Guide strategic customers through model fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and post-training optimization.
About the role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) focused on Post-Training, you will be a hands-on technical partner to our most strategic customers: AI teams using fine-tuning and reinforcement learning to build differentiated models on open-source foundations. FDE does not replace our Solutions Architects. You will work alongside them as the deep-domain specialist in post-training, guiding customers through data strategy, algorithm selection, experiment design, and evaluation, and sizing the compute behind it. You’ll make sure we can deliver on our post-training POCs, drive adoption of our fine-tuning and RL platform, and turn customer goals into measurable gains in model quality. Your work directly affects customer success, company growth, and the hardening of our core platform.
Responsibilities
- Data Strategy: Help customers define and execute their data strategy for model post-training, diagnose data quality issues that limit model performance outcomes, and provide recommendations for data generation for post-training scale
- Algorithm Selection: Recommend the right post-training approach for each use case
- Experiment Design & Hyperparameter Tuning: Design well-controlled experiments and tracking methods; diagnose training instabilities, reward hacking, and regressions.
- Evaluation: Build evaluation frameworks with customers, including task-specific benchmarks, LLM-as-judge pipelines, and held-out test sets. Make sure gains are reproducibly aligned with production success metrics.
- Model Selection: Guide base model selection methodology ahead of post-training efforts and baseline quality evaluations to guide post-training objectives. Interest in self-directed research of newly released open source models, particularly as they relate to post-training.
- RL Workload Sizing: Scope and size RL and fine-tuning workloads, partner with sales and capacity teams to shape deals and capacity forecasts.
- Strategic Customer Alignment: Serve as the primary post-training technical point of contact for aligned strategic accounts. Lead technical execution from scoping to production and make sure we hit critical milestones.
- Product & Research Feedback Loop: Shape our fine-tuning and RL product roadmap with insights from the field. Contribute code, recipes, and reference implementations where needed, and drive early adoption of new features and research with strategic logos.
Requirements
- Experience: 5+ years in a technical role in ML engineering, Applied AI, Forward Deployed Engineering, or Solutions Architect, with recent hands-on experience post-training LLMs.
- Post-Training Depth: Expert-level, hands-on experience with fine-tuning and/or RL for LLMs, including SFT, LoRA, DPO, and RL (GRPO, PPO, etc)..
- Experimental Rigor: Strong track record designing experiments, running ablations, and building evaluations that separate real improvement from noise.
- Data Intuition: Proven ability to build and iterate on training datasets
- Model Landscape Awareness: Broad knowledge of state-of-the-art open-source models and strong judgment on which base model to post-train for a given customer requirements
- Coding Proficiency: Strong Python skills; comfortable working in production environments.
- Experience leading complex, customer-facing technical projects, with exceptional project management and communication skills. Able to work in a highly X-functional environment.
About Together AI
Together AI, the AI Native Cloud, is purpose-built for AI engineers. AI application developers get high-performance inference that scales reliably, fine-tuning and reinforcement learning for creating frontier-level specialized models, and pre-training at massive scale for fully custom intelligence, all around a marketplace of leading open models that teams can run, adapt, and own. Trusted by Cursor, Decagon, ElevenLabs, Salesforce, and Zoom, Together serves 400+ trillion tokens a month.
Compensation
We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits, as well as flexibility in terms of remote work. The US base salary range for this full-time position is: $270,000 - $300,000 OTE + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.
Equal Opportunity
Together AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more.
Please see our Privacy Policy at https://www.together.ai/privacy
How we rate this
Forward Deployed Engineer, Post-Training at Together AI rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $270k
- Typical forward deployed engineer job
- $182k
This posting starts 48% above the typical forward deployed engineer job. See forward deployed engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
- Tell me about a project where reinforcement learning was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where post training was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where ml engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used Cursor in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Fine-tuning, Reinforcement learning, Post Training, ML Engineering, and Cursor. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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