Director, Forward Deployed Engineering (Life Sciences)

Hippocratic AI•Palo Alto, CA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Hippocratic AI is seeking a Director, Forward Deployed Engineering to lead the technical strategy, integration architecture, and deployment execution for launching voice-forward AI agents in the life sciences sector. This role involves defining how agentic AI connects with customer requirements and integrates into complex, security-conscious pharma, biotech, and medtech IT environments. The position requires translating customer needs into technical specifications, iterating with customers and internal teams on AI agent development, and designing integrations with customer CRM systems, data lakes, and API architectures within their data governance frameworks. The Director will own agent script development, integration architecture, technical approval processes, and deployment operations to ensure successful enterprise contract implementations. A key responsibility will be to grow and develop a team of Forward Deployed Engineers.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or higher in a technical discipline (Computer Science, Engineering, Health Informatics, or Life Sciences).
10+ years of experience in enterprise technical integration, forward deployment operations, solution engineering, or technical consulting in enterprise environments, preferably in life sciences and healthcare.
5+ years of experience building and managing a team of forward deployment or integration engineers.
Strong technical fluency across API design and integration patterns and cloud infrastructure.
Demonstrated ability to engage credibly with enterprise CTOs, CISOs, enterprise architects, and IT governance teams.
Comfort working in high-growth environments with limited structure, ambiguous requirements, fast pace, and high expectations for ownership, technical leadership, and cross-functional collaboration.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degrees or certifications in cloud architecture, or enterprise integration.
Experience deploying AI, machine learning, conversational AI, or NLP platforms into enterprise environments.
Direct experience navigating enterprise IT security reviews, vendor qualification processes, and enterprise IT governance — including SOC 2, HIPAA technical safeguards, SIG questionnaires, and CISO-level security evaluations.
Hands-on knowledge of pharma and life sciences IT ecosystems including CRM platforms (Veeva, Salesforce Health Cloud), specialty pharmacy and hub systems, EHR systems, contact center platforms, safety databases, and enterprise data infrastructure.
Experience building and leading technical deployment or integration engineering teams.
Startup or early-stage company experience.

Responsibilities

Serve as the company's senior technical voice in customer-facing engagements, participating in enterprise sales cycles, technical workshops, and architecture reviews with pharma IT, security, and data teams.
Support Sales during RFP and RFI processes by providing accurate, compelling technical responses.
Lead technical discovery sessions with customer IT teams to assess integration requirements, identify technical risks, define deployment scope, and build technical implementation plans.
Drive the translation of customer use case requirements into technical specs for AI agent development, from discovery through UAT.
Develop best practices for AI agent script development, iteration, and testing, maintaining a continuous improvement playbook.
Partner with Engineering to define AI agent building capabilities, integration platform capabilities, and technical infrastructure investments.
Develop reference integration architectures for core deployment patterns, including integrations with CRM, EHR, contact center, telephony platforms, and enterprise data lakes.
Design reliable and secure API-first integration patterns.
Own the end-to-end process for navigating pharma IT security reviews, vendor qualification, and technical approval processes.
Define and operationalize a repeatable deployment methodology for life sciences implementations, including environment provisioning, integration configuration, data migration, testing, UAT, go-live, rollback, and production monitoring.
Oversee early deployments hands-on.
Grow and develop a talent-dense team of Forward Deployed Engineers.