Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

About us

Owkin is an AI company on a mission to solve the complexity of biology. It is building the first Biology Super Intelligence (BASI) by combining powerful biological large language models, multimodal patient data, and agentic software. At the heart of this system is Owkin K, an AI copilot and its new LLM fine-tuned on biology called Owkin Zero, used by researchers, clinicians, and drug developers to better understand biology, validate scientific hypotheses, and deliver better diagnostics and therapies faster.

This position is remote and based in the UK, Germany or France. Please submit your CV in English.

About the role:

We are seeking exceptional Senior Forward Deployed Engineers to work at the intersection of AI, software systems, and biology. In this role, you will partner directly with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to solve high-impact problems by designing, building, and deploying production-grade solutions on top of our agentic AI platform, Owkin K. This is a deeply hands-on engineering role: you will write code, build integrations, design system architectures, and rapidly prototype new capabilities that bring advanced AI into real scientific workflows. A significant portion of this work will be conducted at the customer’s premises. You will collaborate with internal domain experts to design and deliver together on the client expectations. You will also help shape the roadmap of our product by distilling insights from the field back into the platform.

This is an opportunity to set the standard for how the team operates, and contribute to the growth of more junior engineers in a dynamic environment, all while learning from experienced team members with diverse, interdisciplinary backgrounds, and contributing to turning frontier research work into reliable, deployable solutions.

You will operate across three core dimensions:

• Build real systems: Design, implement, and deploy production-grade AI systems on top of Owkin K. You will write code, build integrations, design data pipelines and APIs, and turn ambiguous problems into reliable software used in critical scientific and operational workflows.
• Solve problems with users: Work directly with engineers, data scientists, biologists and clinicians from our customers: leading pharma and biotech companies, as well as within Owkin. You will translate ambiguous scientific and operational challenges into concrete software solutions, rapidly prototyping, iterating with users, and delivering results that have measurable impact.
• Deploy in the real world: Integrate solutions into large, complex, and regulated organizations. You will work with diverse datasets, existing systems, and multiple stakeholders to ensure that the tools you build are reliable, scalable, and actively used in production.

In particular, you will:

• Embed deeply with external customers to solve high-leverage problems by customizing and extending Owkin’s agentic platform K;
• Design, build, and deploy tailored solutions on top of Owkin K, guiding them from conception through final delivery;
• Drive rapid prototyping and iteration to validate solutions early and frequently;
• Balance scope, speed, and quality, adapting plans to ensure successful delivery;
• Act as a technical cornerstone for the team, championing best practices, setting high engineering standards, helping others grow and mentor more junior FDEs;
• Communicate clearly across technical and non-technical stakeholders to align expectations;
• Collaborate with Customer Success Managers, Domain Experts, Product and Engineering teams to guarantee effective delivery, client satisfaction, and sustained adoption of Owkin’s product;
• Turn proven patterns into reusable, scalable components, tools, and playbooks;
• Bridge the gap between field realities and product strategy - bringing structured, actionable insight feedback that drives roadmap direction.

About you

Above all, we seek curious individuals who are driven to learn through hands-on experience and who embrace a strong bias for action. In addition to this, the following skills are required:

• Strong engineering background: 5+ years of experience as a software engineer, with a focus on backend systems.
• Fluent in Python and modern engineering tools and coding co-pilots: write clean, production-grade code, drive architectural decisions, lead technical design discussions.
• Proven track record leading software development at scale in production.
• Experience working with LLMs and agentic AI frameworks.
• Ability to simplify complexity and make fast, sound decisions under time pressure.
• Communicate effectively across diverse audiences: technical teams, product managers and non-technical stakeholders. Adapt language and detail to ensure clarity and alignment.
• Thrive in fast-evolving environments by staying flexible, embracing ambiguity, and proactively driving progress despite incomplete information.

Candidates not meeting all criteria, but who can demonstrate exceptional skill in key areas, are invited to apply.

Bonus skills/experience:

• Proven experience building and deploying on cloud platforms.
• Understanding of the drug development pipeline and related scientific workflows.
• Full stack experience.
• Familiarity with biostatistics, computational biology, or medical imaging.

What we offer:

• Flexible work organization.
• Friendly and informal working environment.
• Opportunity to work with an international team with high technical and scientific backgrounds.

Recruitment Process & Security

Please complete the form and submit your CV. Owkin is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status or on the basis of disability.

Owkin is a great place to work. As a coveted workplace we are, unfortunately, vulnerable to recruitment phishing scams. We urge all job seekers and candidates to be wary of potential scams. Most of these have individuals posing as representatives of prominent companies, including Owkin, with the aim of obtaining personal, sensitive, or financial information from applicants. These scams prey upon an individual’s desire to obtain a job and can sometimes “feel” like a genuine recruitment process. Some red flags are identified below. Should you encounter a recruitment process that claims to be for Owkin but is not consistent with the below, please do not provide any personal or financial information:

• Legitimate Owkin recruitment processes include communication with candidates through recognized professional networks, such as LinkedIn.
• Communication is always through an official Owkin email address (from the @owkin.com domain), over the phone or through our applicant tracking system (Greenhouse).
• The Owkin talent team do use platforms such as LinkedIn and Job Teaser, however if you have any concern or doubt about this contact, please ask for them to send an email from @Owkin.com.
• The Owkin talent team will not solicit personal data from candidates during the application phase including, but not limited to, date of birth, social security numbers, or bank account information.
• Legitimate Owkin interviews may be conducted over the phone, in person, or via an approved enterprise videoconferencing service (Google Meets). They will not occur via Signal, Telegram or Messenger.
• Owkin offers of employment are based on merit and only extended once a candidate has interviewed with members of the talent and hiring team. Offers will be extended both verbally and in written format.

If you think that you have been a victim of fraud, check the identity of the talent team on LinkedIn, check our senior team on our website https://owkin.com/team/, check the existence of the position on our website: https://www.owkin.com/careers#current-opportunities, notify Owkin's recruitment unit at this address hiring@owkin.com, contact the following authorities: [FR] https://internet-signalement.gouv.fr/, [UK] https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/reporting-fraud-and-cyber-crime, [US] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/.