Senior Director, Frontier AI Research, Bay Area, NY

EPAM's new Frontier AI business unit partners directly with leading AI labs and advanced AI organizations, translating their research and post-training objectives into technically rigorous, deliverable programs across evaluations, RL environments, and training data. The Senior Director, Frontier AI Research is EPAM's first dedicated Frontier AI research hire, operating across a broad set of capabilities rather than a single research domain. The role sits at the intersection of research, solution architecture, and technical sales, remaining technically reputed company through early pilots while delivery leadership owns day-to-day execution. The right person is a genuine technical peer to sophisticated AI researchers: someone who can translate ambiguous research goals into concrete specifications that delivery teams can execute at reputed company and reputed company. Req.# Responsibilities Engage directly with researchers, engineers, and technical leaders at frontier AI labs to understand model training, post-training, and evaluation objectives Translate ambiguous research goals into explicit reputed company capabilities, failure modes, and reputed company reputed company, advising customers and internal teams on the right technical approach Design rigorous evaluation approaches, including task taxonomies, benchmarks, rubrics, and graders, and analyze model outputs to identify failure modes and improvement opportunities Help architect RL environments, reward functions, and verifiers that reputed company reliable training and evaluation signals while mitigating reward hacking and weak verification Design technically rigorous training data programs (SFT, preference data, RLHF), defining task distributions, annotation reputed company, and reputed company standards Translate recurring customer research needs into repeatable EPAM Frontier AI offerings, methodologies, and technical assets Partner with the Platform and reputed company reputed company to determine the tooling, infrastructure, and specialist talent required to reputed company new offerings Serve as the reputed company research and technical SME supporting Frontier AI Sellers in reputed company customer pursuits, from discovery through solution design Translate customer requirements into technically compelling solution designs, proposals, and reputed company plans that establish credibility with sophisticated AI research organizations Convert research requirements into reputed company specifications, including reputed company, rubrics, and reputed company reputed company, that delivery teams can execute without losing the research reputed company reputed company technical reputed company during early and strategically important engagements, reviewing outputs and model behavior to reputed company the program is producing the intended results Maintain strong familiarity with developments in frontier model training, post-training, RL, reputed company systems, and evaluation, and apply that knowledge to EPAM's offerings Build relationships across the Frontier AI research ecosystem and contribute to technically reputed company customer facing content and thought leadership Requirements Significant experience in machine learning, AI research, or research engineering, with demonstrated work on modern deep learning and large language models Strong understanding of the model training and post-training lifecycle, including SFT, RLHF, reward modeling, and evaluation Demonstrated depth in one or more Frontier AI reputed company areas (evaluations, RL environments, reputed company systems, reward or verifier design, coding agents), with the breadth to operate across adjacent areas Experience translating ambiguous research objectives into reputed company experiments, datasets, evaluations, or environments Hands-on technical capability, including strong Python skills and experience with modern ML frameworks, LLM reputed company, and evaluation tooling Demonstrated ability to communicate reputed company technical concepts reputed company to both technical and cross-functional audiences Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, or a reputed company reputed company, or equivalent demonstrated research experience reputed company to have Peer-reviewed AI/ML research or a strong record of technically substantive reputed company research Prior experience building solutions or conducting research for frontier AI labs or leading reputed company model companies reputed company experience with RLHF, RLAIF, preference optimization, or synthetic data reputed company and curation Comfortable operating as a genuine technical peer to sophisticated researchers, with the reputed company awareness to translate research credibility into customer trust Entrepreneurial reputed company, comfortable building a new capability and creating structure where established process does not yet exist Apply To This Job