Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Job description

Forward Deployed AI Engineer THE OPPORTUNITY We are looking for a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to serve as the critical bridge between Latent Labs’ frontier generative models and the customers who rely on them. You will work directly with pharmaceutical and biotech customers to deploy, integrate and optimise our technology within their scientific workflows. This is a highly technical, customer-facing role that combines deep infrastructure expertise with a passion for solving real-world problems in drug discovery and protein engineering. You will work closely with our customers, understanding their unique technical environments and ensuring that our generative biology platform integrates seamlessly with their systems. You will own the full lifecycle of customer deployments - from initial technical scoping through to production-grade delivery - and act as the voice of the customer back into our product and research teams. WHO WE ARE At Latent Labs, we are building frontier models that learn the fundamentals of biology. We pursue ambitious goals with curiosity and are committed to scientific excellence. Before building Latent Labs, our team co-developed DeepMind’s Nobel-prize winning AlphaFold, invented latent diffusion, and built pioneering lab data management systems as well as high throughput protein screening platforms. At Latent Labs you will be working with some of the brightest minds in generative AI and biology. Our team is committed to interdisciplinary exchange, continuous learning and collaboration. Team offsites help us foster a culture of trust across our London and San Francisco sites. We’re looking for innovators passionate about tackling complex challenges and maximizing positive global impact. Join us on our moonshot mission. WHO YOU ARE - You have a strong CS or ML educational background. You hold a degree (BSc, MSc or PhD) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related quantitative field. You have a solid grounding in software engineering principles and modern ML frameworks. - You have built systems that access large models via APIs. You have significant experience designing, deploying and maintaining infrastructure for large-scale model serving and have hands-on experience building robust API layers around ML models. - You are customer-facing and delivery-oriented. You have direct experience deploying AI systems for external customers. You can translate complex technical concepts into clear language for non-technical stakeholders and thrive in environments where customer success is the primary measure of your work. - You are fluent in cloud infrastructure. You have hands-on experience with AWS and ideally other major cloud platforms (GCP, Azure). You are comfortable with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native architectures. - You are a strong communicator and collaborator. You work effectively across functions - with research scientists and business executives alike. You are comfortable leading technical discussions, writing clear documentation, and presenting solutions to senior stakeholders at partner organisations. - You are mission driven and adaptable. You are passionate about making a positive impact on the world, whether it’s for patients, customers or beyond. You thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment where priorities can shift and you need to context-switch between multiple customer engagements. WHAT SETS YOU APART - You have experience with bio or protein design models. You have worked on ML-driven projects in computational biology, protein design, or related life science domains. You understand the unique data challenges and evaluation paradigms of biological modelling. - You have contributed to generative modelling innovation. You have a track record of novel contributions to generative modelling - whether through publications, open-source work, or impactful product features. - You have built production enterprise software. You have experience delivering software that meets enterprise-grade requirements for security, compliance, auditability and uptime. You understand the difference between a prototype and a production system. - You have pharma or biotech industry experience. You understand the regulatory landscape, data governance requirements and scientific workflows common in pharmaceutical and biotech organisations. YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES Customer deployment & integration: - Drive the end-to-end technical deployment of Latent Labs models into customer environments, ensuring seamless integration with existing scientific and IT infrastructure. - Design and build production-grade API integrations, data pipelines and model-serving infrastructure tailored to each customer’s requirements. - Work on-site or embedded with pharma and biotech partners to scope technical requirements, troubleshoot issues and deliver solutions. - Ensure deployments meet enterprise standards for security, performance and reliability. Customer advocacy & product feedback: - Serve as the technical point of contact for assigned customers, building trusted relationships with their scientific and engineering teams, including spending time working on-site at international partner locations as needed - Gather and synthesise customer feedback, translating it into actionable insights for our product, research and platform teams. - Collaborate with internal teams to shape the product roadmap based on real-world deployment learnings. - Create technical documentation, integration guides and best-practice resources for customers. Self development: - Stay on top of the latest developments in ML infrastructure, model serving and cloud-native tooling. - Gain a strong working understanding of protein and cell biology as it relates to our product. - Participate in knowledge sharing, e.g. organise and present at our internal reading group. APPLY We offer strongly competitive compensation and benefits packages, including: - Private health insurance - Pension contributions - Generous leave policies (including gender neutral parental leave) - Hybrid working - Travel opportunities and more We also offer a stimulating work environment, and the opportunity to shape the future of synthetic biology through the application of breakthrough generative models. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and we are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills.