Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer

Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer | AI Infrastructure Startup for Biopharma | Full-Time | Up to £140K + Founding Equity

About the Company

Our client is an elite AI infrastructure company transforming how strategic commercial decisions are made across the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Founded by a very bright team and backed by top-tier venture capital, the company pairs advanced AI research with deep industry expertise spanning commercial portfolio strategy, forecasting, and competitive intelligence.

Their platform replaces noisy, manual research vendors with custom AI systems that continuously monitor global clinical trials, regulatory milestones, conference readouts, deal activity, and HCP research - cutting insight delivery time by over 90% for top-10 biopharmas.

Operating with a forward-deployed engineering model, they build and embed secure, proprietary AI systems directly into client environments, giving global pharma leaders verifiable, document-traceable competitive intelligence in minutes instead of days.

About the Role

Reporting directly to the Founders, the Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer sits at the critical intersection of core systems architecture and client-facing technical execution. This is not an isolated back-office developer seat; it is a high-visibility, high-horsepower role designed for someone who can write production code in the morning and lead technical problem-scoping sessions with enterprise pharma stakeholders in the afternoon.

You will help design the core multi-source data and LLM extraction infrastructure, while embedding directly with client teams to discover requirements, scope custom AI modules, and ship live, secure solutions in weeks.

The founders place a strong premium on exceptional intellect and demonstrated excellence -whether proven through top-tier academic performance (e.g., Oxbridge, Imperial, Ivy League, or equivalent STEM pedigree), high-tier contest math/Olympiad backgrounds, or a track record of outperforming at premier engineering institutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner directly with senior biopharma strategy and competitive intelligence leaders to unpack complex commercial problems, translate ambiguous needs into technical specs, and deploy custom modules rapidly into client environments.

• Build and maintain scalable, reliable data pipelines ingesting multi-modal global life-sciences data (clinical registries, conference abstracts, regulatory filings, and market intelligence).

• Develop robust inference, vector search, and extraction workflows using modern foundation models, with uncompromising standards for zero-hallucination provenance and source-document traceability.

• Implement robust, SOC 2–aligned cloud environments featuring fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC), end-to-end encryption, and isolated client data perimeters.

• Move seamlessly from whiteboard discovery to working client software within weeks, maintaining tight feedback loops to iterate on features in real time.

Skills & Competencies

• High EQ, poise, and communication clarity to sit across from enterprise executives, ask the right diagnostic questions, and defend technical trade-offs without buzzwords.

• Strong hands-on engineering capabilities across modern backend stacks (Python/TypeScript), cloud infrastructure, distributed data ingestion, and API integration.

• Hands-on experience implementing production RAG, document parsing, and structured extraction pipelines where accuracy and auditability are non-negotiable.

• A bias toward shipping; comfortable building 80/20 MVPs to validate requirements quickly before hardening them into scalable infrastructure.

• Proven ability to break down unfamiliar domains (like complex oncology clinical trial data or pharma licensing terms) and map them cleanly into data structures and business logic.

Qualifications & Experience

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally with exposure to client-facing engineering, forward-deployed engineering (FDE), or high-velocity B2B SaaS environments.

• Strong academic credentials or concrete evidence of top 1% technical ability (e.g., First Class / Distinction degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or Engineering from leading institutions; competitive programming achievements; or standout contributions to technical systems).

• Experience engaging directly with end-users or enterprise clients to gather requirements, run workshops, and iterate on live feedback.

• Solid software fundamentals: deep understanding of distributed systems, databases, cloud architecture, and modern AI/LLM tooling.

Role Details

• Position: Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer (Full-Time).

• Location: London (Hybrid model, combining high-bandwidth co-located building with flexible remote days and occasional client visits).

• Package: up to £140K base + meaningful founding equity stake.

• Progression: Direct path to Head of Forward-Deployed Engineering or core architectural leadership as the business and deployment footprint scale.