Founding Technical Program Manager

Preference Model•San Francisco, CA

9d•Onsite

About The Position

Preference Model is a superintelligence data research company that builds reinforcement learning environments for training capable, better-aligned superintelligences. The company has built RL environments for several frontier labs and is backed by $16M in seed funding led by a16z. Its founding team has experience building data infrastructure and datasets behind Claude. Preference Model is hiring its first Technical Program Manager to own relationships with frontier lab customers. This founding role has broad ownership across customer communication, sales, delivery coordination, scope expansion, and contract negotiation. The platform team owns technical delivery. The role will help determine which labs to pursue, how work is priced, and what the company builds next; develop the go-to-market playbook; and may eventually expand the team. The position reports directly to a co-founder and is onsite in San Francisco, working alongside leadership, the capabilities team, and the platform team. Success means projects ship on timelines trusted by both sides and customer relationships grow into larger engagements.

Requirements

Experience building something from the ground up, such as at an early-stage startup, as a founder, or in venture capital.
A technical background, such as a computer science or closely related technical degree, or previous software engineering experience.
External customer-facing experience, such as as a forward deployed engineer, in customer success or operations, as a product manager, or in venture capital.
At least 2 years of relevant experience.
Experience negotiating commercial terms, such as customer contracts, pricing, or investment deals.
Confidence working with senior technical stakeholders and the follow-through to keep multiple relationships moving at once.
Ability to push back on unrealistic requests, deliver bad news early, and ensure that nothing is dropped.

Nice To Haves

Experience with LLM training or post-training is strongly preferred.
Experience at a frontier AI lab, neo lab, or neocloud.
Experience at a company known for strong customer support.
Familiarity with RL environments, evaluations, benchmarks, or post-training data such as RLHF or RLVR.
Public writing, such as a blog, newsletter, or essays, or activity on social media.
Experience starting as a software engineer or forward deployed engineer and later taking on roles combining technical depth with ownership of customer outcomes.
Experience founding a company and selling directly to technical buyers.
Experience running engagements for frontier lab customers at an AI data, evaluation, or RL-environment company.

Responsibilities

Own relationships with frontier lab customers, serve as their main point of contact, advance each relationship, and grow accounts into larger engagements.
Work with leadership to decide which labs and markets to pursue and where to focus as the RL-environment market changes.
Run the sales cycle, including sending samples, learning customer needs, and turning early conversations into scoped projects.
Shape pricing and packaging and negotiate contracts with the co-founders.
Build feedback loops that translate customer feedback into focus areas and priorities.
Keep delivery on track with the internal team by setting realistic timelines, reviewing purchase orders, and partnering with the platform team on technical delivery coordination.
Represent Preference Model publicly through writing, events, and participation in the AI community.
Build the go-to-market function from scratch, including repeatable playbooks for selling, scoping, contracting, and delivery.