Applied AI Research Lead

Company Intro

At
Toloka AI
we create data that powers leading GenAI models and innovations. We work with frontier labs, big tech, renowned AI startups, enterprises and non-profit research organizations worldwide. We use a combination of Experts + Crowd + Tech Platform to teach AI models to reason and evaluate their efficacy and safety. We have experts in more than 50 different domains—from doctors and lawyers to physicists and engineers—and boast one of the most diverse global crowds,
representing over
100 countries and speaking 40+ languages
. We are a well-funded startup with an enviable portfolio of clients including
Anthropic
,
Amazon
,
Microsoft
,
poolside
,
Recraft
, and
Shopify
.

Recently, we secured strategic investment led by
Bezos Expeditions
with participation from
Mikhail Parakhin
,
CTO of Shopify
and board advisor to leading GenAI companies, who now serves as our Chairman of the Board. Our remote-first team is globally distributed around the world:
USA
,
UK
,
the Netherlands
,
Israel
,
Czech Republic
,
Serbia
, and more. We are headquartered in Amsterdam.

About the role

We're looking for a hands-on
AI Research Lead
who will act as the bridge between our customers and our data generation teams. You will work directly with AI researchers, data scientists, and product teams at leading
GenAI
organizations to understand their needs, translate them into rigorous data strategies, and design the evaluation, training, or agentic workflows required to achieve their goals.

This is a hybrid research & solution design role
: you'll apply your deep expertise in
LLMs
and
agentic systems
to
architect datasets
,
prompts
,
evaluation metrics
, and
workflows
that power cutting-edge applications.

What You'll Work On

1.
Act as a customer-facing AI expert
: deeply understand client research goals, model behaviors, and data needs to advise on best practices in data generation for LLMs, leveraging Toloka's platform and ML audit capabilities.

2.
Contribute thought leadership
internally and externally on designing data strategies for LLM training, evaluation, and agentic workflows, including:

• Defining quality criteria and evaluation metrics
• Architecting prompt-based tasks, labeling methodologies, and model-in-the-loop pipelines
• Identifying the right balance between expert labeling, crowdsourcing, and automation

3.
Manage and grow a team of Solution Engineers
- mentor them in technical execution, data methodology and client communication to turn research designs into production-grade pipelines.

4.
Own project delivery end-to-end
, ensuring timelines, quality, and scalability.

5.
Work cross-functionally
with Product, BizDev, and ML teams to support strategic accounts, pilot new data products and validate audit methods.

About You

• 3+ years of experience as an AI researcher, ML scientist, or applied LLM engineer, ideally having
  trained or fine-tuned LLMs
  and/or built agentic systems. Strong understanding of LLM architectures, prompting techniques, synthetic data generation, data-centric AI, and evaluation frameworks.
• Excellent ability to communicate
  complex technical concepts to customers and translate business goals into data and research plans.
• At least 2+ years in a
  managerial or team lead role
  , overseeing technical teams or research engineers.
• Strong Python skills and familiarity with common ML libraries (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face).
• Comfortable working in fast-paced environments and collaborating cross-functionally with engineers, data scientists, and business teams.
• Passionate about data quality, evaluation methodologies, and pushing the boundaries of GenAI applications.

What we can offer

• You'll have the opportunity to work on highly innovative, projects at the leading edge of AI development, and work with a genuinely dedicated and dynamic team of experts.
• You'll also be working on projects with customers that are AI industry leaders and household names.
• Personal and career development: we support employee's ambition for professional development and encourage them to implement their ideas in their projects.
• Flexibility: we offer a remote or hybrid employment. You will also design with your manager a workday that works best for you.
• Paid parental leave and sick leave.
• Medical insurance fully covered for the employee + 80% of coverage for family members;
• Meal allowance, transportation expenses reimbursement.
• 25 vacation days per year.