Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Engineer

Valthos; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A pioneering technology firm based in California is seeking a Software Engineer to own the deployment of AI systems in customer environments. The role involves collaborating with government and commercial users to build integrations and custom tooling. Candidates should possess a strong software engineering background, expertise in Python and React, and the ability to work independently. This position requires travel to customer sites approximately 25% of the time and offers the chance to engage with scientists and analysts in the field.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with ability to build and ship production systems.
• Experience with Python, React, TypeScript, and cloud infrastructure.
• Ability to collaborate effectively in multi-disciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end deployment of the platform in customer environments.
• Embed with users to understand missions and workflows.
• Build custom tooling that connects Valthos capabilities to customer needs.
• Translate computational biology methods into user-friendly workflows.
• Act as the technical face of Valthos in customer engagements.

Skills

Software engineering

Python

React

TypeScript

Data structures

Cloud infrastructure

Collaboration

Adaptability

Job description

Valthos is an applied biological intelligence company that builds and deploys software and biological AI systems to safeguard humanity.

Software Engineer

We build and deploy AI architectures that enable self-driving cars, land rockets with precision, and expert-level reasoning. These same architectures are now being deployed in biological design to capture and mitigate real-time sensitivities of nature’s evolving mutational landscape.

Our team consists of mission-driven software engineers from Palantir and applied biological ML engineers from MIT’s Broad Institute and DeepMind, making advances in computational biology accessible for federal and commercial use.

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs)

FDEs connect Valthos’s platform to operators. They deploy alongside agents at national security agencies, laboratories, and pharmaceutical companies. Projects start with questions such as “How do we know if this sequence is dangerous?” or “Can we design a countermeasure against this variant in days instead of months?” FDEs lead solution development from mission understanding and scoping through system design, prototyping, data integration, and application development.

The Role

• Own end-to-end deployment of Valthos’s platform in customer environments, from scoping requirements through go‑live and iteration.
• Embed with government and commercial users to deeply understand their missions, workflows, and pain points across biosurveillance, threat characterization, and countermeasure design.
• Build integrations, custom tooling, and configurations that connect Valthos capabilities to customer-specific data sources, infrastructure, and operational needs.
• Translate complex computational biology methods into production-quality, user-facing workflows, packaging research artifacts into reliable, usable, and maintainable tools.
• Play a role in go‑to‑market and business development; shape funding for biodefense, source opportunities and contracts, and write and submit proposals.
• Serve as the technical face of Valthos in customer engagements, working with scientists, analysts, and senior government stakeholders.
• Close the feedback loop between the field and the product team, synthesizing customer needs into actionable engineering and product requirements that shape the roadmap.
• Rapidly prototype and ship custom solutions when standard product capabilities do not yet meet a mission need, working across the full stack.

Qualifications (required)

• Strong software engineering background with demonstrated ability to build and ship production systems.
• Expertise with Python, React, TypeScript, and other common languages and technologies.
• Mastery of data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical underpinnings of modern application stacks.
• Deep understanding of how technical decisions impact users and how to balance tradeoffs between technical complexity and speed of iteration.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively in teams of technical and non-technical individuals, and to work in a rapidly changing environment with dynamic objectives.
• Demonstrated ability to continuously learn, work independently, and make decisions with minimal supervision.
• Willingness and interest to travel approximately 25%+ of the time to customer sites, including government facilities.

Qualifications (preferred)

• Experience in defense tech, national security, or government contracting environments.
• Background in or exposure to computational biology, bioinformatics, or life sciences.
• Experience deploying ML/AI systems into operational or production environments.
• Prior work in forward deployed, field engineering, solutions engineering, or technical account management roles.
• Familiarity with bioinformatics tools and workflows (sequence analysis, protein structure prediction, genomic data pipelines).