# Lead Research Engineer, Data Quality - Company: [Clera]() - Location: San Francisco - Team: Engineering - Employment type: Full Time - Salary: $150K – $250K - Posted: August 27, 2026 ## Job description ### About the Role This is a senior, hands-on leadership role at an early-stage AI/ML startup building infrastructure for reinforcement learning environments and post-training data. You'll own the strategy and systems that measure, improve, and scale training data quality for frontier agents — shaping both the technical direction and the internal culture around what makes agent training data genuinely useful. ### What You'll Do * Lead the data quality team in building systems that evaluate thousands of tasks across RL environments, synthetic data, benchmarks, and domain-specific workflows. * Define data quality strategy by building QC systems, enforcing standards, and designing experiments to grade agent outputs. * Develop and implement methods for validating synthetic data at scale, including failure-mode analysis, task mutation checks, and trajectory auditing. * Partner with research engineers, domain experts, and data vendors to diagnose quality issues and improve data generation workflows. * Turn qualitative research insights into production systems — internal tools, dashboards, validation pipelines, and feedback loops. * Mentor research engineers to maintain a high bar for technical rigor, clarity, and execution speed. ### What We're Looking For * 5+ years of experience in research or data quality engineering, specifically building systems for AI/ML data evaluation. * Demonstrated track record leading technical teams or projects on ambiguous problems, from definition through implementation and iteration. * Advanced proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments. * Deep intuition for what makes AI agent training data realistic, learnable, diverse, reliable, and useful. * Experience translating research insights into production-grade tools and pipelines. * Ability to design metrics, experiments, and QA/QC processes — not just execute them. * Experience working with subject-matter experts to capture domain judgment and convert it into scalable review or generation systems. * Strong written communication skills; able to explain methodology clearly to technical and non-technical audiences alike. * Comfort navigating complex systems involving domain experts, vendors, model outputs, graders, and infrastructure. * Prior early-stage startup experience; self-directed and effective in fast-paced, resource-constrained environments. ### Compensation & Benefits Base salary **$150,000 – $250,000 USD** annually. Visa sponsorship is available. ### Location On-site in **San Francisco, CA**. This role is not remote. ## Apply [Apply on Clera]() Canonical job page: