About idler

idler builds evaluation datasets and reinforcement learning environments that teach frontier models how real professionals and organizations work. We partner closely with serious institutions to model their precise workflows, and we hold ourselves to a high bar for quality.

We've closed a multimillion-dollar contract with a leading foundation lab, a $9M seed led by Paradigm, and we are facing more lab demand than we can currently serve.

We believe advanced AI should be trained on work that is rigorous, responsibly produced, and grounded in real expertise, and we are building toward that standard.

About the Role

Forward Deployed Engineers are heavily customer and partner-facing technical experts who own the entire system that turns our partners’ real work into evals & RL environments.

You’ll work directly with researchers at top AI labs to understand how they measure and train their models, identifying capability gaps and proposing what we should build next. You’ll establish and maintain partnerships with leaders of companies, civil institutions, and research labs, and you’ll build reusable, robust technical infrastructure to model entire organizations’ workflows to a high degree of precision.

This role combines hands-on technical work, customer & partner management, and rapid execution. You'll switch context frequently and stay ahead of issues before they become blockers. You're expected to employ sophisticated systems-level thinking, make sound judgment calls, and take ownership of outcomes.

In this role, you will:

• Own the end to end product pipeline — you will maintain a clear, complete model of customer demand and partnership opportunities, and you will directly shape our product roadmap.

• Manage both the technical AND relational sides of the customer and partner lifecycles — you will build the tooling you need to manage relationships successfully, while also advocating for customers’ and partners’ needs with the rest of the team.

• Build systems rather than one-off solutions — every customer or partner onboarding should be easier than the last because you built the tooling that made it so.

What we value

• Customer & partner empathy — you enjoy the process of understanding what people want, and you come up with creative and repeatable ways to create win-win scenarios.

• Grit, coupled with good judgement — you’re comfortable operating in ambiguous, high-intensity environments. You’re independent and resourceful, but you know when you should ask for help before acting.

• Meticulous attention to detail — you would rather find and fix the problems in your work than let someone else discover them for you.

• Ownership mindset — you take responsibility for results, not just tasks.

• Global curiosity — you explore far beyond your scope, and you easily make connections between topics which are not obviously related.

Requirements

• Strong engineering foundation from a rigorous technical environment.

• Advanced in at least one modern programming language (Python, TypeScript, or similar), with experience writing and debugging production systems.

• Extraordinary literacy, as evidenced by written and verbal communication. You can hold your own with senior researchers and non-technical executives alike.

• A track record of exceptional performance in whatever you've pursued — academic, athletic, professional, or entrepreneurial.

• A high tolerance for ambiguity, intensity, and sustained effort when the problem demands it.

• Willingness to travel.

You might excel if you…

• Have worked at an early-stage startup, or in a role where you operated well beyond your job description.

• Learn quickly by being embedded in challenging, real-world environments.

• Have thought seriously about starting your own company.

Details

• In-person in San Francisco

• Competitive salary + meaningful equity

• Free meals in office

• Healthcare, 401(k), 15 days of PTO per year

• Relocation assistance

• Small, ambitious team

This is an in-person role in San Francisco. We're a tight-knit founding team and we play to win. Join us if you like to win too.