Senior Forward Deployed Engineer
$165k - $190k • Cambridge, MA • Full-time
Posted 17d ago
About the job
Manifold is seeking Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) to join our team at the intersection of AI, data infrastructure, and life sciences. In this high-impact role, you will collaborate directly with scientists and clinicians across biopharma, academic research, and health systems to implement Manifold's platform with their data, guiding projects from initial scoping through to production. As the primary technical and scientific contact for your accounts, you will operate autonomously, thrive under ambiguity, and represent Manifold at the highest level, earning customer trust and driving successful outcomes.
Responsibilities
- Scope and architect end-to-end solutions on Manifold's platform, recommending configuration, custom builds, or self-service paths.
- Configure and implement the platform, including data pipelines, agent configuration, process automation, and domain-specific tooling.
- Own delivery from onboarding and pilot through to production, working with customer data in their environment.
- Run discovery sessions, demos, and end-user training, and provide post-go-live support.
- Troubleshoot complex issues across infrastructure, data, and application layers.
- Identify repeatable patterns, playbooks, and tooling to accelerate future deployments.
- Collaborate with Product and GTM teams, feeding customer insights back into the product roadmap.
- Share learnings, document knowledge, and mentor other FDEs to improve team performance.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in a technical customer-facing role or equivalent.
- Deep expertise in at least one of the following areas: AI agents and evaluation, data engineering and modeling, cloud infrastructure and software development, or life science/clinical research.
- Working knowledge of several other technical or scientific areas.
- Scientific or clinical fluency to engage in peer-level conversations with researchers.
- Shipped Python and SQL into production.
- Experience building AI into workflows, using tools like Claude Code or Cursor.
- Proven ability to execute with velocity and ship working solutions quickly in complex environments.
- Ability to lead customer conversations with diverse stakeholders.
- High agency with a bias towards speed, pragmatism, and ownership.
- Bachelor's degree or higher in a computational, engineering, life science, or clinical field, or equivalent experience.
Benefits
- Willing to travel to customer sites as needed (~10% travel).