Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Manifold AI • Cambridge, MA

2d

About The Position

Manifold is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work at the intersection of AI, data infrastructure, and life sciences. The role works directly with scientists and clinicians across biopharma, academic research, and health systems to put Manifold’s platform to work with customer data, from scoping through production. The FDE is the primary technical and scientific contact for assigned accounts, partnering with an Implementation Manager who owns the customer relationship and collaborating with Implementation, Product, and Account Management teams. The position requires autonomous work amid ambiguity, broad familiarity with the platform, and the ability to build customer trust and own the path to successful outcomes.

The FDE scopes and architects end-to-end platform solutions, determines whether needs call for configuration, custom development, or self-service, and configures and implements the platform. This includes building data pipelines, agent configurations, process automation, and domain-specific tools. The FDE owns delivery from onboarding and pilot through production, working with customer data in customer environments. The role also involves discovery, demonstrations, training, post-launch adoption support, and troubleshooting across infrastructure, data, and application layers. The FDE identifies reusable deployment patterns and tooling, contributes customer insights to the product roadmap, and shares documentation and practices that help the team improve.

The role requires at least five years of experience in a technical customer-facing role or equivalent demonstrated impact, deep production expertise in at least one relevant area, and working knowledge of several others. Candidates should have scientific or clinical fluency, production experience with Python and SQL, experience using AI in their work, and a record of delivering practical solutions quickly in complex environments. A bachelor’s degree or higher in a computational, engineering, life science, or clinical field—or equivalent experience—is required. Travel to customer sites is currently approximately 10%.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in a technical customer-facing role, or equivalent demonstrated impact.
• Deep expertise in production ownership of at least one relevant technical area and working knowledge of several others.
• Scientific or clinical fluency sufficient to hold peer-level conversations with researchers.
• Production experience shipping Python and SQL, with examples of systems built that remain in operation.
• Experience incorporating AI into work, including use of Claude Code, Cursor, or similar agentic tools, and concrete examples of expanded capabilities.
• A record of delivering working solutions quickly in complex, real-world environments and explaining the decisions made.
• Ability to lead customer conversations independently with stakeholders ranging from bench scientists to C-suite executives.
• High agency, pragmatism, speed, ownership, and sound judgment about when to build and when not to.
• Ability to improve the people and systems around you and create patterns others adopt.
• Willingness and enthusiasm to learn on each engagement.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a computational, engineering, life science, or clinical field, or equivalent experience.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed; travel is currently approximately 10%.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in life science and clinical research, including bench, translational, or clinical research; EHR structures; trial and registry data; OMOP; ICD; or SNOMED.
• Bioinformatics and genomics experience, such as analysis pipelines, genomic file formats, and reference data.
• Data engineering and modeling experience, including ingestion and orchestration with Airflow, dbt, or Snowflake; production ELT; schema design; data quality; and validation.
• Cloud infrastructure and software development experience, including AWS, infrastructure as code, deployment into customer-controlled accounts, backend APIs, third-party integrations, large shared codebases, and frontend development in React or an equivalent.
• Experience with AI agents and evaluation, including agent configuration, prompting, and checking output correctness.
• Experience with regulated data environments, including HIPAA, IRB constraints, and clinical data governance.

Responsibilities

• Scope and architect end-to-end solutions on Manifold’s platform, recommending configuration, custom development, or a self-service path as appropriate.
• Configure and implement the platform for customers, building data pipelines, agent configurations, process automation, and domain-specific tooling as needed.
• Own delivery from onboarding and pilot through production, working with customer data in customer environments.
• Run discovery sessions, demonstrations, and end-user training, and support adoption after go-live.
• Troubleshoot complex issues across infrastructure, data, and application layers.
• Identify repeatable patterns, playbooks, and tooling that accelerate future deployments and help define deployment standards.
• Collaborate with Product and GTM teams and communicate customer insights to inform the product roadmap.
• Share effective practices, document learnings, and help other Forward Deployed Engineers improve.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior