Principal - Forward Deployed Engineer

1925 GlaxoSmithKline LLC; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 205,000 - 342,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care

Retirement benefits

Paid holidays

Job summary

GlaxoSmithKline plc is seeking a Senior Enterprise AI leader to define and own enterprise AI engineering standards across multiple business units. You will be hands-on with frontier AI, guide architecture, and lead large FDE teams to deliver scalable AI solutions.

You will mentor Staff/Senior engineers, shape roadmaps with BU leaders, and ensure governance, security, and scalability across all AI initiatives. Strong MVP-to-production execution is expected.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software/AI/ML engineering experience with principal-level leadership
• Bachelor's degree in CS or software engineering or equivalent
• Proven track record of setting engineering standards and reference architectures
• Experience taking AI ideas to production at speed across multiple teams
• Hands-on experience with GenAI patterns, agents, orchestration, RAG, and MCP integrations
• Enterprise-level AI, ML, data science, and MLOps knowledge for standards
• Experience mentoring Staff and Senior engineers and influencing senior leaders

Responsibilities

• Define enterprise-level development standards for AI across GSK
• Set direction for AI-native engineering and scalable delivery
• Own enterprise pattern library, MCP integrations, and reference architectures
• Lead high-impact design reviews and governance for AI solutions
• Own delivery for a portfolio of business units, from intake to handoff
• Lead multi-FDE teams and mentor senior engineers
• Influence BU leaders on AI roadmaps and kill/continue decisions
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Cyber Security to ensure scalable prototypes

Skills

Senior technical leadership

AI/ML engineering

Engineering standards

GenAI patterns

Hands-on AI coding agents

Stakeholder collaboration

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or software engineering

Master's or PhD in CS/ML (preferred)

Tools

GCP for ML

Microsoft Azure AI

MCP integrations

AI frameworks

Job description

Business Introduction

GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centered on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems. Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines. Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges.

Position Summary

GSK's Enterprise AI team builds AI solutions that prove value fast and scale to production. Forward Deployed Engineering is the front of the Enterprise AI delivery pipeline — proving AI ideas with the business through PoCs, PoVs, MVPs, and, where appropriate, first production versions, before handing proven solutions to Solutions Engineering for scale-up — bringing to GSK a model proven by AI-native companies such as Anthropic, Palantir, and OpenAI. You will act as the most senior technical authority in the FDE function, operating at enterprise scope with two equal mandates: setting the standards for AI-native, enterprise-level development across GSK — architecture, agentic delivery-automation workflows, delivery bot meshes, evaluation, and governance — and owning FDE delivery outcomes for a defined portfolio of strategic business units. This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who leads through technical credibility: staying hands‑on at the frontier of AI‑augmented engineering, leading Staff and Senior FDEs on the most consequential engagements and shaping how AI engineering is done well beyond the FDE team. As Enterprise AI scales, the value of each engagement increasingly depends on what it leaves behind: you will set standards from real delivery experience, prove them inside the business units that matter most, and serve as the escalation point for the hardest architecture, ML, and agentic‑engineering decisions. Humans steer, agents execute.

Responsibilities

• Define and own enterprise‑level development standards for AI solutions across GSK — reference architectures, agentic delivery‑automation workflows, delivery bot meshes, evaluation frameworks, and handoff hygiene — adopted by FDE, Solutions Engineering, and Operations Engineering alike.
• Set the enterprise technical direction for AI-native engineering, going well beyond vibe coding to establish how agentic workflows and delivery bot meshes are designed, secured, monitored, and reused at scale.
• Own the enterprise pattern library and reference platform, ensuring reusable agents, prompt templates, MCP integrations, and reference architectures are good enough that teams across GSK adopt them without rework.
• Chair FDE technical design review and contribute to Enterprise AI architecture governance, approving, challenging, or redirecting high‑impact technical decisions.
• Own FDE delivery for a defined portfolio of strategic business units — engagement pipeline, prioritization, quality, and outcomes from intake to clean handoff.
• Lead the most complex, precedent‑setting engagements personally, staying hands‑on in problem framing, architecture, and prototype delivery.
• Lead multi‑FDE engagement teams, directing Staff, Senior, and Engineer‑level FDEs across concurrent engagements within assigned business units.
• Partner with Director and VP‑level business unit leaders, shaping their AI roadmaps, qualifying the highest‑value use cases, and making and defending kill/continue decisions with multi‑year business consequences.
• Act as the technical authority and escalation point for the FDE function on architecture, ML, data science, and agentic engineering.
• Mentor and grow Staff and Senior FDEs, shaping the technical career path toward Principal and raising the technical bar of the function.
• Calibrate the technical hiring bar — leading senior technical interviews and setting the standard for senior FDE hires.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Data Platforms, Cyber Security, and Tech functions, aligning FDE standards with enterprise platforms so prototypes are built to scale.
• Influence vendor strategy and tooling choices, evaluating and shaping the adoption of AI models, agent frameworks, and developer tooling at enterprise scale.
• Represent GSK's AI engineering practice externally through industry forums, partner relationships, and technical publications where appropriate.
• Build governance in by design, embedding Code Orange, Responsible AI, and Accountability Report requirements into enterprise development standards so governance is part of every engagement, not bolted on.
• Report to Enterprise AI leadership on standards adoption, business unit delivery outcomes, and technical risk across the portfolio.

Why You?

Basic Qualification

We are seeking professionals with the following required skills and qualifications to help us achieve our goals

• 15 or more years of experience in software engineering and AI/ML engineering, including principal-level technical leadership across multiple teams or an enterprise.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated track record of setting engineering standards, reference architectures, or platforms that were adopted at organizational or enterprise scale.
• Proven track record of taking AI ideas from sketch to working software and production at speed in customer‑facing or embedded engineering roles, and leading delivery across a portfolio of business stakeholders.
• Understanding of hands‑on expertise in GenAI patterns, including agents, multi‑agent orchestration, RAG, prompt engineering, evaluation, fine‑tuning, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.
• Enterprise‑level expertise in AI, ML, and data science — classical ML, deep learning, LLMs and foundation models, statistical and causal inference, and MLOps at scale — sufficient to set modeling and evaluation standards across an organization.
• Demonstrated daily use of AI coding agents, such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Databricks AI Assistant, as the primary mode of development, with a track record of architecting agentic delivery‑automation workflows and delivery bot meshes and defining enterprise standards for their use.
• Experience influencing and partnering with Director and VP‑level business and technology leaders.
• Prior responsibility for mentoring Staff‑and Senior‑level engineers and shaping senior technical career paths.

Preferred Qualification

• Principal, Distinguished, or Head of Forward Deployed Engineering‑level experience at an AI-native company (Anthropic, Palantir, OpenAI, or similar) or a hyperscaler.
• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative field.

GSK‑LI Skills

• AI Frameworks
• Algorithm Optimization
• Artificial Neural Networks (ANNS)
• Computer Programming
• Deep Learning
• Feature Engineering
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for Machine Learning
• Machine Learning Algorithms
• Machine Learning Operations
• Microsoft Azure Data and AI
• ML Frameworks
• Model Evaluation
• Model Training
• Model Validation
• Performance Optimizations
• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Salary and Benefits

If you are based in Cambridge, MA; Waltham, MA; Rockville, MD; or San Francisco, CA, the annual base salary for new hires in this position ranges $205,425 to $342,375.

The US salary ranges take into account a number of factors including work location within the US market, the candidate’s skills, experience, education level and the market rate for the role.

In addition, this position offers an annual bonus and eligibility to participate in our share based long term incentive program which is dependent on the level of the role.

Available benefits include health care and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, paid holidays, vacation, and paid caregiver/parental and medical leave.

If salary ranges are not displayed in the job posting for a specific country, the relevant compensation will be discussed during the recruitment process.

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive.

We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law.

Please note that if you are a US Licensed Healthcare Professional or Healthcare Professional as defined by the laws of the state issuing your license, GSK may be required to capture and report expenses GSK incurs, on your behalf, in the event you are afforded an interview for employment. This capture of applicable transfers of value is necessary to ensure GSK’s compliance to all federal and state US Transparency requirements.

For more information, please visit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/

We are a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. Getting ahead means preventing disease as well as treating it, and we aim to impact the health of 2.5 billion people around the world in the next 10 years. Our success absolutely depends on our people. While getting ahead of disease together is about our ambition for patients and shareholders, it’s also about making GSK a place where people can thrive. We want GSK to be a place where they feel inspired, encouraged and challenged to be the best they can be. A place where they can keep growing and look after their wellbeing.