Research Program Manager

Skills this role screens for

About the role

ABOUT AFTERQUERY

AfterQuery https://www.afterquery.com/ is an applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development. We serve every frontier AI lab with the mission of delivering the best data to power the best models. In doing so, we can make expertise that once took a lifetime to build available to anyone who needs it.

Our customers are the ones building the foundation models themselves and our work sits directly in the loop of how those systems improve. This is a rare opportunity to join a company at a defining moment in AI. Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation. We're based in San Francisco and backed by leading investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator and angels from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.

Also

WHY APPLY

Massive Opportunity: Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation, and we're not slowing down.

Founding Impact: You will own and architect core infrastructure systems that power our platform from the ground up.

Equity & Growth: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. As we scale, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the engineering organization and lead major technical initiatives.

Strong Team: Our founding team has experience from Citadel Securities, Meta, Google, Silver Lake, and Morgan Stanley — work alongside world-class engineers and researchers.

Also

OVERVIEW

AfterQuery is hiring a Research Program Manager to run the operations behind its research programs: public benchmark releases, collaborations with academic and industry partners, and the research roadmap. You own the coordination, external relationships, and progress tracking that keep the program moving, and you are welcome to contribute to the research itself, from benchmark design to co-authoring publications.

This is a technical, hands-on role, not a pure coordination one. You will read results tables, run evals, sanity-check numbers before they go public, and turn loosely specified research needs into engineering and operational roadmaps. You will also be the program's voice to external partners, so clear writing and confident communication across researchers, executives, and academics are as important as technical fluency. You work daily with researchers, engineers, domain experts, and go-to-market partners.

The work

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve as the point of contact for collaborations with academic and industry partners, including fellowships, grants, and joint research projects, and run each from scoping through delivery.
• Coordinate benchmark releases end to end, from launch checklist through publication, and keep releases on cadence.
• Maintain AfterQuery's leaderboards and benchmark sites, and verify every result before it goes to a community leaderboard or publication.
• Track progress across all active research projects. Anticipate resourcing gaps and technical bottlenecks, unblock projects that fall behind, and escalate with a clear recommendation when a timeline or scope needs to change.
• Coordinate the expert pool for upcoming benchmarks: forecast expert needs, manage capacity, and keep contributor logistics running.
• Write the program's external and internal communications: launch briefs, partner updates, planning documents, and status memos that turn technical detail into clear, actionable summaries.

Who they want

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 1-3+ years in research operations, technical program management, or a similar role in a fast-moving research or engineering organization.
• Technical background in computer science, machine learning, statistics, or a related field, with working Python and SQL.
• Evaluation literacy: you have taken part in evaluating a product, an agent, or a foundation model, can read a results table, and can tell when a number should not be trusted.
• Excellent written and verbal commun