Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - SF

Forward Deployed Engineering - San Francisco

About the team

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with global pharma and biotech 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 product and model roadmaps. You’ll work closely with our 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 San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance.

Travel up to 50% is required.

In this role, you will:

• 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 we demonstrate sustained production impact.
• 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.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Bring 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.
• Have owned customer GenAI deployments end-to-end from scoping through production adoption, and improved them through evaluation design, error analysis, and iterative evidence generation that tightens acceptance criteria over time.
• Have delivered AI systems in trial design, regulatory writing, or scientific operations where validation strategy, auditability, compliance constraints, and reviewer expectations shaped system design and rollout.
• Communicate clearly across scientific, clinical, model research, technical, and executive audiences, translating technical tradeoffs into decision quality, risk posture, and measurable outcomes with credibility.
• Apply systems thinking with high execution standards, consistently turning failures, escalations, and audit findings into improved operating standards, validation artifacts, and repeatable deployment playbooks.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation

$185K – $300K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.