Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - Paris

Details

About the team

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with global pharma and biotech, CROs, and research institutions to deploy existing expertise across the R&D value chain to 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.

About the role

We are hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to push the frontier on what is possible today across drug discovery (e.g., target identification, molecular design, pre-clinical) and development (e.g., trial design, trial ops, biostats) by leading end-to-end deployments of our models inside life sciences organizations and research institutions. You will work with customers who are deep experts in their scientific or operational domains, translating real-world data, infrastructure, and constraints into production systems.

You will measure success through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and eval-driven feedback loops, including evaluation benchmarks and acceptance criteria, that inform product and model roadmaps. You will work closely with Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM to deliver in regulated contexts, including inspection readiness with audit trails and traceable evidence. This role is based in Paris and uses a hybrid work model (3 days in the office per week). Relocation assistance is offered. Travel up to 50% is required.

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 an execution plan with measurable endpoints.
• Define and enforce launch criteria for regulated contexts, including validation evidence, audit readiness, outcome metrics, and 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 encouraged.
• Experience owning customer GenAI deployments end-to-end from scoping through production adoption, including evaluation design, error analysis, and iterative evidence generation that tightens acceptance criteria over time.
• 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 communication skills across scientific, clinical, model research, technical, and executive audiences; able to translate technical tradeoffs into decision quality, risk posture, and measurable outcomes.
• Systems thinking and high execution standards, consistently turning failures, escalations, and audit findings into improved operating standards, validation artifacts, and repeatable deployment playbooks.

Benefits and Compensation

• Salary range: $220,000 - $280,000 per year. Offers include equity.
• Base pay may vary depending on market location, knowledge, skills, and experience. Total compensation may include equity and performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts; pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses; 401(k) with employer match.
• Paid parental leave, paid medical and caregiver leave, flexible PTO, paid company holidays, and paid sick or safe time as required by applicable law.
• 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.

Other notes

• Background checks will be administered in accordance with applicable law. OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.