Freelance Forward Deployed AI Engineer

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  and  Nebius Group  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 ,   Serbia , and more. 

About position

The Forward Deployed AI Engineer  is Toloka's most senior client-facing technical role. You will partner directly with CTOs, VPs of Engineering and ML, research leaders, and applied AI teams, helping them solve complex AI data challenges and translate ambitious model goals into practical, scalable solutions.

This is a  hands-on role . You will design and build the  data-generation ,  labeling , and  evaluation pipelines t hat power the next generation of  AI models . Rather than training the models yourself, you'll help clients identify the right data strategy and own the solution from problem discovery through implementation and delivery.

Beyond delivering client solutions, you'll help shape how Toloka approaches AI solution engineering - establishing best practices, raising the technical bar across engagements, and mentoring  Solution Engineers  and  Technical Consultants .

Why this role is different

Every engagement is different. One week you might be designing evaluation pipelines for frontier foundation models, the next helping an enterprise build domain-specific reasoning datasets or synthetic data workflows.

This role sits at the intersection of consulting, engineering, and AI. You'll work directly with some of the world's leading AI companies, helping shape how next-generation models are trained and evaluated.

What you'll do

Executive partnership

Act as the primary technical counterpart to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and research/engineering leadership.

Lead executive conversations using a structured, answer-first (BLUF) approach.

Manage escalations and expectations with composure and integrity.

Build long-term trusted relationships by recommending evidence-based solutions.

Data strategy & needs diagnosis

Ask  excellent questions  to uncover the client's real need - the "question behind the question." Understand their model, which metrics they want to move, and how they intend to train or evaluate it.

Draw on a solid understanding of  how LLMs are trained and fine-tuned  to have credible conversations with their technical leaders, understand their data strategy, and  proactively propose the data  that will solve their problem - with options and rationale ("based on your goal, you likely need this, or this").

Solution engineering & delivery (hands-on)

Design and build the data solutions yourself:  configure data-labeling components and quality controls, develop user interfaces and AI-driven solutions (e.g. agentic systems, RAG, synthetic data generation), and integrate them into  automated, multi-stage pipelines  that produce data for AI training and evaluation.

Architect and reason about  complex, multi-stage solutions  end to end; run experiments to prove the pipeline delivers data of the required quality and speed; iterate from MVP toward production.

Provide technical leadership across multiple client engage …