Site Forward Deployed Engineer

Description

The role is a new strategic position that puts a technology lead on site at key manufacturing locations, engaging with products and supporting delivery. The person acts as the link between local business stakeholders and the global digital product teams.

The company aims for £40 billion in annual sales by 2031 and to improve health for 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade. Its Ahead Together strategy focuses on early intervention to prevent disease and change its course. The portfolio covers vaccines, specialty medicines and general medicines, with four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases.

You will work inside the company's strategic sites and business teams, turning high-priority Smart Manufacturing and AI ideas into working PoCs, PoVs and MVPs. The role is equivalent in scope and seniority to an Associate Director or Senior Manager.

Responsibilities

• Spend time within strategic sites and business teams to learn their operational problems, workflows, data, constraints and the highest-value opportunities.
• Turn priority Smart Manufacturing, AI, data and digital opportunities into measurable use cases and workable technical solutions.
• Build and test PoCs, PoVs and MVPs on real site data, systems and workflows, delivering in days or weeks rather than long discovery phases.
• Do hands-on engineering across AI, data, integration, applications and automation, using AI-assisted development and agent-based workflows where they fit.
• Recommend whether to continue, adapt or stop each effort, based on proven business value, technical feasibility, likely adoption, risk and scalability.
• Apply Code Orange, Responsible AI, cybersecurity, data governance, privacy, GxP and architecture governance requirements from the first day of each engagement.
• Work with the relevant company product teams to move validated solutions into industrial use, scaling, support and ongoing ownership.
• Remove blockers caused by legacy systems, fragmented data, integration, security, compliance and local operating processes, working with site and product teams.
• Turn what you learn at one site into reusable agents, integration patterns, prompt templates, reference architectures and product requirements for other strategic sites.
• Grow site capability through joint delivery, technical coaching, documentation and knowledge transfer, and give structured feedback to product and platform roadmaps.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Information Technology, Manufacturing Systems or a related technical field.
• 6+ years of job-related experience in technology, engineering, data, AI, digital or manufacturing settings.
• Experience delivering AI, data and analytics, Smart Manufacturing or digital transformation work in manufacturing or supply chain settings.
• Software engineering experience with modern application development frameworks.
• Experience with generative AI, AI agents, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or AI-assisted development.
• Experience building PoCs, PoVs or MVPs.
• Experience working directly with business stakeholders to define, shape and deliver technology solutions.
• Experience working across product, data, engineering or business teams.
• Preferred: a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Data Science, Software Engineering, Manufacturing Informatics, Digital Transformation, Technology Management or a related discipline.
• Preferred: Python or another relevant programming language.
• Preferred: knowledge of manufacturing operations, business processes and operational technology environments.
• Preferred: knowledge of Responsible AI, cybersecurity, privacy, data governance and GxP-regulated environments.
• Preferred: cloud and modern data platform experience, including Azure.
• Preferred: LI AGTech.
• Skills that help in this role: Agile methodology, cross-functional teamwork, data analysis, design thinking, DevOps, prioritisation, product development research, product roadmapping, project management, return on investment (ROI), software development, strategy deployment, user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design.

Conditions

Candidates who need an accommodation to apply can contact the US recruitment team.

The company does not accept referrals from employment agencies for these roles unless prior written authorisation was obtained, and it is not liable for fees from unauthorised referrals.

US licensed healthcare professionals: if you are offered an interview, the company may be required to record and report expenses it incurs for you, to meet federal and state US transparency rules.

Benefits

• A summary of the comprehensive benefits programme for US employees is published online.