The posting
About Snorkel
Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes.
Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!
Research Fellow
About the Role
As a Research Fellow at Snorkel, you’ll build open benchmarks and evaluation environments that help shape how AI progress is measured. This fellowship is for PhD students and postdocs who want to turn important questions in their fields into new ways to evaluate AI capabilities.
You’ll own the project from the initial research question through public release, setting its direction and leading its development. A Snorkel researcher will serve as your co-advisor, and you’ll have access to Snorkel’s broader resources, including paid time from credentialed domain experts and compute to run experiments and evaluate frontier models.
You’ll retain your academic affiliation while spending at least one day a week with Snorkel’s research team, including in person in our San Francisco or New York offices where applicable.
What you’ll do
- Scope and lead a new benchmark, dataset, or environment in a domain where current evaluations fall short
- Define the task specification, rubrics, and reference answers with domain experts from Snorkel's network, and run the expert review process
- Release the research artifact publicly, with you as lead author.
- Join weekly research meetings to share progress, receive feedback, and contribute to other researchers’ projects
What you'll get
- A Snorkel research co-advisor matched to your project
- Domain Experts, compute, and engineering support for your project
- An open-source academic artifact released as a part of your work
- Time with Snorkel’s research team and other fellows, plus access to research and community events
- Research communications support to share your findings with the broader community
- A firsthand view of how a leading data research lab bridges academic research and work with frontier labs and enterprises
What we’re looking for:
- You’re excited to advance how AI is evaluated in your field and have the research background to design and build open benchmarks, datasets, or environments.
- You have demonstrated the ability to turn research ideas into working code, datasets, tools, or other usable research artifacts
- You work well with domain experts outside your own field and can turn their judgment into a specification
- You can scope a project to a public release within the fellowship term
Nice to have:
- Publications at venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or the top venues in your own discipline
- Experience with agentic evaluation, RL environments, or LLM evaluation harnesses
- Deep expertise in a domain where expert-level evaluation is scarce, such as the sciences, medicine, law, finance, or engineering
Salary range(s) for this role
Hourly ranges from $85-$165+/hour. Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.
#LI-DNI
Be Your Best at Snorkel
Joining Snorkel AI means becoming part of a company that has market proven solutions, robust funding, and is scaling rapidly—offering a unique combination of stability and the excitement of high growth. As a member of our team, you’ll have meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and initiatives, influence key strategic decisions, and directly impact our ongoing success. Whether you’re looking to deepen your technical expertise, explore leadership opportunities, or learn new skills across multiple functions, you’re fully supported in building your career in an environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success.
Snorkel AI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Snorkel AI embraces diversity and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Snorkel AI prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, performance, merit, and business need.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
