Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Engineer

Job description

FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER Valthos Inc. Valthos is an applied biological intelligence company. We build and deploy software and biological AI systems to safeguard humanity. The same AI architectures that enable self-driving cars, land rockets with precision, and deliver expert-level reasoning are beginning to be deployed in biological design. To stay ahead, we must advance our arsenal of tools to capture and design against real-time sensitivities in nature's evolving mutational landscape. We are a group of mission-driven software engineers from Palantir and applied biological ML engineers from MIT's Broad Institute and DeepMind making the latest advances in computational biology accessible in the real-world for federal and commercial use. Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) are the connective tissue between Valthos's platform and the operators using it. They deploy directly alongside our users at national security agencies, national laboratories, and pharmaceutical companies. Projects often start with a nebulous question: "How do we know if this sequence is dangerous?" or "Can we design a countermeasure against this variant in days instead of months?" FDEs lead the way in developing a solution, from understanding the mission and scoping requirements through system design, prototyping, data integration, and application development. You will gain rare insight into some of the most consequential workflows in biosecurity and biodefense. Each customer environment presents different challenges, from the nature of the biological data to the regulatory and classification requirements to the technical sophistication of the user population. You will work to accommodate all aspects of an environment to drive real technical outcomes for our customers. Whether you aspire to be an entrepreneur or an engineering leader, we believe Valthos is the best place, with the best colleagues, to learn how. You will learn how to unpack a problem and understand the costs and consequences of its solution. You will learn new technologies and domains, and build entirely new tools yourself. You will work autonomously and make decisions independently, within a small team that will support and challenge you as you grow. THE ROLE - Own the end-to-end deployment of Valthos's platform in customer environments, from scoping requirements through go-live and iteration - Embed with government and commercial users to deeply understand their missions, workflows, and pain points across biosurveillance, threat characterization, and countermeasure design - Build integrations, custom tooling, and configurations that connect Valthos capabilities to customer-specific data sources, infrastructure, and operational needs - Translate complex computational biology methods into production-quality, user-facing workflows, packaging research artifacts into tools that are reliable, usable, and maintainable - Play a key role in go-to-market and business development; work to shape and incept funding for biodefense, source opportunities and contracts, write and submit proposals, etc. - Serve as the technical face of Valthos in customer engagements, working with scientists, analysts, and senior government stakeholders - Close the feedback loop between the field and the product team, synthesizing customer needs into actionable engineering and product requirements that shape the roadmap - Rapidly prototype and ship custom solutions when standard product capabilities do not yet meet a mission need, working across the full stack QUALIFICATIONS (REQUIRED) - Strong software engineering background with demonstrated ability to build and ship production systems - Expertise with Python, react, typescript, and other common languages and technologies. - Mastery of data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical underpinnings of modern application stacks. - Deep understanding of how technical decisions impact the user of what you are building and how to balance tradeoffs between technical complexity and speed of iteration. - Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively in teams of technical and non-technical individuals, and comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment with dynamic objectives and iteration with users - Demonstrated ability to continuously learn, work independently, and make decisions with minimal supervision - Willingness and interest to travel approximately 25%+ of the time to customer sites, including government facilities QUALIFICATIONS (PREFERRED) - Experience in defense tech, national security, or government contracting environments - Background in or exposure to computational biology, bioinformatics, or life sciences - Experience deploying ML/AI systems into operational or production environments - Prior work in forward deployed, field engineering, solutions engineering, or technical account management roles - Familiarity with bioinformatics tools and workflows (sequence analysis, protein structure prediction, genomic data pipelines) If there is a fit, we will schedule behavioral and technical interviews. The final step is an onsite in our office, where you will work on a small project, discuss ideas, and work with the wider team.