Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - NYC

Details

About the Team

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, and research institutions to deploy existing expertise across the R&D value chain. The team helps customers design and ship production-grade AI systems and 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.

About the Role

The Forward Deployed Engineer will lead end-to-end deployments of OpenAI’s models inside life sciences organizations and research institutions, advancing applications across drug discovery, including target identification, molecular design, and pre-clinical research, as well as development activities such as trial design, trial operations, and biostatistics.

The role involves translating real-world data, infrastructure, and operational constraints into production systems. Success will be measured through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and evaluation-driven feedback loops, including evaluation benchmarks and acceptance criteria that inform product and model roadmaps. The role works closely with Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams to deliver systems in regulated contexts, including inspection readiness with audit trails and traceable evidence.

This role is based in New York City and follows a hybrid work model requiring three days in the office per week. Travel of up to 50% is required. Relocation assistance is available 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, and drive delivery until sustained production impact is demonstrated.
• Build systems 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 the 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

• Five or more years of software or machine learning engineering, or technical deployment experience with customer-facing ownership in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, clinical research, or scientific software.
• A PhD, master’s degree, or equivalent applied experience in a life sciences-relevant field is encouraged.
• Experience owning customer generative AI deployments end-to-end, from scoping through production adoption, and improving them through 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.
• Ability to communicate clearly across scientific, clinical, model research, technical, and executive audiences, translating technical tradeoffs into decision quality, risk posture, and measurable outcomes.
• Systems thinking and high execution standards, including the ability to turn failures, escalations, and audit findings into improved operating standards, validation artifacts, and repeatable deployment playbooks.

Benefits

• Base salary of $185,000–$300,000 per year.
• Equity and performance-related bonuses for eligible employees.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health and dependent care expenses, as well as commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, paid company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time as required by law.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.