Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - NYC

Details

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with global pharma and biotech, CROs, and research institutions to deploy expertise across the R&D value chain and help customers design and ship production-grade AI systems. The team operates at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development, converting early deployments into repeatable system standards and evaluation practices that scale across regulated environments.

This role is based in New York City with a hybrid work model (3 days in the office per week). Travel up to 50% is required. Relocation assistance is offered for eligible employees.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship production systems around models, owning integrations, data provenance, reliability, and on-call readiness across research, clinical, and operational workflows.
• Lead discovery and scoping from pre-sales through post-sales, translating ambiguous workflow needs into hypothesis-driven problem framing, system requirements, and execution plans with measurable endpoints.
• Define and enforce launch criteria for regulated contexts, including validation evidence, audit readiness, and outcome metrics; drive delivery until sustained production impact is demonstrated.
• Build in sensitive scientific data environments where auditability, validation, and access controls shape architecture, operating procedures, and failure handling.
• Run evaluation loops that measure model and system quality against workflow-specific scientific benchmarks and use results to drive model and product changes.
• Distill deployment learnings into hardened primitives, reference architectures, validation templates, and benchmark harnesses that scale across regulated life sciences environments.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software/ML engineering or technical deployment experience with customer-facing ownership in biotech, pharma, clinical research, or scientific software. PhD, MS, or equivalent applied experience in a life-sciences-relevant field is encouraged.
• Experience owning end-to-end GenAI deployments from scoping through production adoption, and improving them via evaluation design, error analysis, and iterative evidence generation.
• Experience delivering AI systems in trial design, regulatory writing, or scientific operations where validation strategy, auditability, compliance constraints, and reviewer expectations shaped system design and rollout.
• Strong cross-functional communication skills to translate technical tradeoffs into decision quality, risk posture, and measurable outcomes for scientific, clinical, model research, technical, and executive audiences.
• Systems thinking and high execution standards: ability to turn failures, escalations, and audit findings into improved operating standards, validation artifacts, and repeatable deployment playbooks.

About the team

The Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM to deliver AI systems in regulated contexts, including inspection readiness with audit trails and traceable evidence.

Benefits

• Base pay range: $220,000–$280,000 (offers equity and other total compensation components).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts (Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits).
• 401(k) with employer match.
• Paid parental and medical/caregiver leave.
• Flexible PTO (exempt) and paid time off for non-exempt employees; 13+ paid company holidays and office closures.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend; daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Background checks as applicable and reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.