Forward Deployed Engineer, Post-Training

Together AI

San Francisco, CAFull-time$270,000–$300,000Posted Oct 24, 2026

About the role

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

Responsibilities

  • Guide strategic customers on data strategy, post-training algorithms, experiments, evaluations, and model selection.
  • Design experiments and diagnose training instabilities, reward hacking, and model regressions.
  • Build evaluation frameworks and ensure improvements align with production metrics.
  • Scope and size reinforcement learning and fine-tuning workloads.
  • Lead customer-facing technical execution from scoping through production.
  • Share customer insights with product and research teams and contribute code, recipes, and reference implementations.

Qualifications

  • At least 5 years of experience in ML engineering, Applied AI, Forward Deployed Engineering, or Solutions Architecture.
  • Recent hands-on experience post-training large language models, including SFT, LoRA, DPO, and reinforcement learning methods such as GRPO or PPO.
  • Strong experience designing experiments, running ablations, and building evaluations.
  • Experience building and iterating on training datasets.
  • Broad knowledge of open-source models and ability to select suitable base models.
  • Strong Python skills and experience in production environments.
  • Experience leading complex customer-facing technical projects with strong project management and communication skills.

Benefits

  • Startup equity
  • Health insurance
  • Other benefits
  • Flexibility in remote work

Skills mentioned

PythonMachine LearningDeep LearningPyTorchFine-TuningReinforcement LearningModel EvaluationLarge Language ModelsTransformersData Science

About Together AI

Together AI is the AI Native Cloud, purpose-built for AI engineers and researchers with a full suite of tooling across inference, model shaping, and pre-training. AI natives can use Together AI as a full-stack AI platform — from a high- performance inference engine built for reliable and fast scaling to on-demand GPU clusters and massive-scale AI factories. Together AI continuously pushes the frontier forward by productizing cutting-edge research from our world-leading AI systems research team. By combining research velocity with production-grade infrastructure, we enable companies to reliably scale AI-native applications as fast as the field evolves. Trusted by leading AI natives like Cursor, Decagon, Eleven Labs, AI21, Hedra, and Cartesia, as well as SaaS innovators such as Salesforce, Zoom, and Zomato, Together AI powers the next generation of AI-native applications.

Software Development201-500 employeesSan Francisco, California