Forward Deployed Engineer

Modern Relay; United States; On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Modern Relay is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to create knowledge pipelines and deploy AI systems that solve complex data challenges in biopharma. The ideal candidate must have strong software engineering skills, especially in Python, along with experience in building resilient data applications. This role involves collaborating with design partners and translating knowledge into scalable solutions, offering significant autonomy and ownership within a mission-driven environment.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, particularly in Python.
• Experience building, testing, and deploying robust data applications in a cloud environment.
• Hands-on experience wrangling data and structuring for practical information extraction.

Responsibilities

• Architect and write code to ingest, parse, and structure data from various sources.
• Configure and deploy AI agents to perform knowledge work.
• Translate knowledge maps into scalable data models and pipelines.

Skills

Strong software engineering fundamentals

Experience in Python

Building resilient data pipelines

Applied AI experience

Collaboration with non-technical partners

Tools

GCP

AWS

Job description

Forward Deployed Engineer

About Equator

We’re a next-generation AI-native solution rethinking how information flows through the most complex and high-stakes organizations in the world, biopharma and biotech.

We’re building the system of record for scientific collaboration: a knowledge platform where insights, strategy, and decision-making come together in one place. Imagine if Veeva, Notion, and Git had a child but purpose-built for the teams shaping the future of launch excellence.

Our mission is to accelerate the most important research in the world extending and preserving human lives. This work starts in biopharma where we tackle the extreme knowledge complexity in clinicals, regulatory affairs, and commercial operations.

About the Role

This is an applied engineering role focused on building the tangible reality of our mission. While our systems engineers build the core git‑like primitives, you are the one who wields them. You will build the robust data pipelines and AI agent configurations that solve our customers’ most acute information challenges. Your work is to connect the customer’s fragmented universe of data from legacy CRMs and internal documents to public APIs like PubMed into our single, coherent knowledge graph.

You won’t be just building dashboards or fine‑tuning models in a lab. You'll be deploying end‑to‑end systems that directly enable AI to contribute to a drug launch, making human‑AI collaboration a concrete, productionized reality.

What You’ll Do

• Build Knowledge Pipelines: Architect and write the code to ingest, parse, and structure data from a diverse set of sources (e.g. Veeva CRM exports, ClinicalTrials.gov, unstructured scientific literature).
• Implement AI Agents: Configure and deploy our AI agents to perform specific knowledge work such as identifying emerging key opinion leaders from publication data or flagging contradictions in regulatory documents.
• Model the Domain: Partner with a Deployment Strategist to translate their abstract knowledge maps into scalable data models, schemas, and pipelines within the Equator platform.
• Own the Integration: You will be the technical point person for our design partners, responsible for the full lifecycle of the integration from initial build to ongoing performance and reliability.
• Pressure‑Test the Platform: Your work on the front lines will provide the critical feedback loop to our core engineering team, helping to harden and improve the underlying primitives of Equator.

What We’re Looking For

• Pragmatic Engineering: Strong software engineering fundamentals, particularly in Python. You have experience building, testing, and deploying robust data applications in a cloud environment (GCP/AWS).
• Data and API Fluency: Deep experience building resilient pipelines that consume data from a mix of modern APIs and messy, legacy data sources. You know how to handle the edge cases.
• Applied AI Experience: You have hands‑on experience wrangling data and structuring data for practical information extraction, classification, and synthesis in a production context. You understand the difference between a demo and a reliable system.
• Product‑Minded: You are obsessed with the user’s problem and can think through the entire system to deliver a solution. You are an excellent collaborator with non‑technical partners.
• Bias for Shipping: You are driven to get working solutions into the hands of users, learn from the results, and iterate quickly. You thrive with a high degree of autonomy and ownership.

Our Values

• Low Ego: We discuss ideas with strong opinions, weakly held.
• Ownership: We take responsibility for outcomes, not just deliverables.
• Clarity: We strive to make the complex understandable for our users and for each other.
• First‑principles thinking: We challenge assumptions and design from the ground up.
• Velocity: We value iteration, shipping fast, and learning faster while ensuring scalability.
• Mission‑first: We ensure that the mission‑critical institutions we support receive the highest standards.

We believe innovation is strongest when teams are composed of individuals with varying backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We encourage candidates from all walks of life to apply even if you don’t meet 100% of the criteria. If you’re excited about the role and our mission, we’d love to hear from you.