Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI
Pika Labs · Palo Alto HQ
About this role
**Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI — Job Description (Pika)** ## About the Role At Pika, we’re looking for a technically strong, client-facing AI researcher who can turn customer feedback into models and workflows that solve real business needs. You’ll work directly with clients to understand their goals, identify where current model outputs fall short, and fine-tune or post-train models for their use cases. When model adaptation isn’t enough, you’ll build the supporting workflow. This is a full-time, hands-on, revenue-driven applied research role. Clear communication, professional client service, reliable delivery, and independent execution matter as much as technical ability. ## What You’ll Do - **Understand the client’s needs:** Listen carefully, ask focused questions, and translate requests/feedback into a clear problem, practical scope, and agreed success criteria. - **Adapt models for real use cases:** Fine-tune and post-train models to address client needs. Prepare examples and evaluation criteria, diagnose gaps, and verify each iteration improves outcomes. - **Build the complete solution:** Create or adapt workflows around models when needed—connecting APIs, tools, and processing steps into a usable solution for deployment. - **Iterate quickly with clients:** Share working results early, gather specific feedback, and make focused improvements in short cycles. Balance quality, complexity, cost, and delivery speed. - **Communicate professionally:** Explain technical options and limitations clearly, set realistic expectations, respond thoughtfully, and keep clients informed on progress and next steps. - **Own execution and coordinate with the team:** Drive day-to-day work independently while keeping teammates aligned on requirements, priorities, progress, and blockers. Escalate risks early when needed. - **Deliver for deployment:** Move successful experiments into usable deployments with clear evaluation results, reproducible workflows, and documentation for handoff. - **Help close client engagements:** Demonstrate value, address technical concerns, and help turn successful iterations into client commitments and ongoing revenue. ## What We’re Looking For - **Hands-on experience** fine-tuning or post-training generative AI models, with the ability to diagnose model behavior and evaluate whether adaptation solves the intended problem. - **Strong coding and practical ML skills:** Implement experiments, work with data, debug model pipelines, and build supporting workflows. - **Excellent listening and communication skills:** Clarify ambiguous requests and explain technical work to clients with varying expertise. - **Professional judgment, reliability, and a service mindset:** Handle feedback constructively, communicate limitations honestly, take ownership, and build trust through follow-through. - **Independence and ownership** with strong collaboration and communication. - **Fast feedback cycle capability:** Prioritize high-impact improvements and connect technical decisions to client value and commercial outcomes. ## Preferred Experience - Prior **client-facing AI/ML experience** with end-to-end delivery (requirements → model adaptation → evaluation → integration → deployment). - Delivering reliable AI solutions for external clients/users and supporting them through feedback and iteration. - **LoRA fine-tuning** (or other parameter-efficient adaptation methods) and feedback-driven post-training. - Building **model evaluation
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