Technical Program Manager - Research

Snorkel AI•San Francisco, CA

6d•$150,000 - $210,000

About The Position

At Snorkel, we believe meaningful AI doesn’t start with the model, it starts with the data. We’re on a mission to help enterprises transform expert knowledge into specialized AI at scale. The AI landscape has gone through incredible changes between 2015, when Snorkel started as a research project in the Stanford AI Lab, to the generative AI breakthroughs of today. But one thing has remained constant: the data you use to build AI is the key to achieving differentiation, high performance, and production-ready systems. We work with some of the world's largest organizations to empower scientists, engineers, financial experts, product creators, journalists, and more to build custom AI with their data faster than ever before. Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler! About the Role We're looking for a Research Program Manager to own and drive some of the most cross-cutting work in our research organization. This is a builder role: you'll stand up new programs, connect dots across teams, and make sure our research partnerships and internal projects actually move at the pace of frontier AI. You'll operate across three key areas: Open Benchmarks Grants Program: You'll own the full lifecycle of our grants program — from the application funnel and review process through award administration, partner introductions, and ongoing grantee relationships. This program is early, and you'll be the one shaping how it scales. Research Project Management: You'll be the connective tissue across a portfolio of active research projects, building the systems that make status legible and risks impossible to ignore. You'll also be an external-facing partner, working directly with collaborators and customers on technical programs. Roadmap Synthesis & Cross-Functional Strategy: You'll take learnings from grants, partnerships, and project execution and synthesize them into inputs that shape our data and research roadmap. There's significant whitespace here, especially around frontier capabilities work, and we want someone who sees that as an opportunity.

Requirements

5+ years in program management, technical program management, or research operations: ideally in an environment where you had to build systems and processes, not just inherit them
Organizational Rigor: You bring structure to chaos, know what's at risk before anyone asks, you maintain the source of truth that everyone else relies on, and nothing falls through the cracks.
Bias towards action: You default to action. When something needs doing and there's no playbook, you write the playbook while doing the thing.
Direct, proactive communication: When a project is at risk, you name it clearly — to the team, to leadership, to the partner — even when it's uncomfortable. You're willing to call someone out when a deadline is slipping or a dependency is being ignored, and you do it in a way that accelerates the work rather than creating drama
Strong technical intuition: You need to be able to follow the work, ask sharp questions, and translate between technical and operational contexts.
Clear communication: You can explain the same project to a researcher, an exec, and an external partner and each one walks away feeling like you spoke their language.

Nice To Haves

Experience with research partnerships (e.g. grants, academic collab) is a strong plus
Familiarity with AI/ML research is highly valued. You don't need to write papers, but you should be able to read an abstract and know what's interesting about it
Comfort with data analysis and synthesis — e.g., pulling insights from messy project data, usage metrics, or partner feedback and turning it into something actionable for a roadmap
Prior startup or early-stage experience, reinforcing ability to build zero-to-one.

Responsibilities

Build and run the Open Benchmarks Grants program end-to-end: application pipeline, acceptance criteria, communications with applicants, award logistics, and partner coordination
Track and drive status across a portfolio of research projects; identify risks early and escalate them loudly — you're the person who says "this is going to slip" before it slips, and you make sure the right people hear it
Serve as a credible, technical point of contact for external partners and customers — someone who earns trust through competence, not just process
Synthesize insights from across programs and projects into strategic recommendations that feed our research and data roadmap
Work cross-functionally with research, engineering, product, and partnerships teams to connect workstreams and reduce friction

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