Senior Manager, Applied AI Research

TL;DR

Senior Manager, Applied AI Research: Responsible for developing human-in-the-loop systems, guiding experts on complex tasks, and leading data-centric method innovation. The role acts as the primary link between Research, Product, and Engineering, focusing on defining techniques that will power the next generation of foundation models and scaling research-driven workflows.

Location: Bay Area (Hybrid or In-Office)

Salary: $270,000 - $320,000 USD

Company

hirify.global helps enterprises transform expert knowledge into specialized AI at scale.

What you will do

• Team Building & Leadership: Recruit and lead a team of applied researchers, setting team culture and quality standards.
• Act as the primary link between Research, Product, and Engineering.
• Frontier Data Research: Collaborate with AI labs to define data-centric techniques for foundation models.
• Strategic Roadmapping: Anticipate AI data bottlenecks (e.g., automated RLHF, agentic evaluation) and develop programmatic solutions.
• Operational Excellence: Partner with Operations to validate research-driven workflows in real-world production environments.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in applied AI, research or machine learning roles, with at least 4+ years of experience managing technical teams
• A player coach who is willing to be hands-on with coding, research, customer-facing engagements
• A proven track record of thriving in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, comfortable managing competing priorities across cross-functional stakeholders in Product, Engineering, and GTM
• Enjoys solving real-world problems in the data space and bridging research and production
• Strong, practical experience working with LLMs, agentic workflow

Nice to have

• Experience with data annotation workflows and/or building internal tooling for them

Culture & Benefits

• Part of a company with market-proven solutions and robust funding, offering stability and high growth.
• Shape priorities, influence strategic decisions, and directly impact ongoing success.
• Opportunities to deepen technical expertise, explore leadership roles, and learn new skills.
• Career development in an environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success.