---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Engineer at Valthos'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-forward-deployed-engineer-valthos-new-york-byw70s6r2cw7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Engineer at Valthos

- **Company:** Valthos
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valthos/6f460b05-94b1-457a-ac7d-17af48425ca2

## 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.

## About Valthos

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Valthos builds frontier AI systems that identify biological threats and design medical countermeasures in real time, strengthening biodefense for government and life sciences stakeholders.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – $30M raised)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Kathleen McMahon (Co-Founder & CEO) and Tess van Stekelenburg (Co-Founder & President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Biodefense, Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology
- **Target customers**: Government agencies (biodefense, national security) and life sciences organizations (pharma, biotech, public health)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To build next-generation biodefense by developing AI systems that can rapidly characterize biological sequences and design adaptive medical countermeasures, ensuring threats are neutralized as fast as they emerge.

## Products & Services
- **Frontier AI Biodefense Platform**: A software infrastructure that harnesses computational methods to characterize biological sequences and compress the time to design medical countermeasures. The platform is designed for experts in government and life sciences to detect and mitigate biological threats with speed and precision. Type: AI/Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for defense and biosecurity.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (Private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $30 million (Seed round, announced October 29, 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital, Founders Fund. Additional support from investors including OpenAI, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and more.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Raised $30M seed financing from top-tier investors (OpenAI, Lux, Founders Fund) signaling strong institutional confidence.
  - Founding team drawn from Palantir, DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
  - Actively hiring across 12+ open positions (Applied AI, Software Engineering, Computational Biology, Operations) as of mid-2025.
  - LinkedIn follower growth of +10.7% monthly, indicating increasing brand awareness.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique positioning at the intersection of AI and biodefense**: Addresses a critical, high-stakes niche that few startups target.
- **World-class founding team**: CEO Kathleen McMahon previously led Palantir’s Life Sciences division; President Tess van Stekelenburg is a partner at Lux Capital. Technical leads come from DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
- **Backing from AI and defense leaders**: OpenAI, Lux Capital, and Founders Fund provide both capital and strategic credibility.
- **First-mover in adaptive countermeasure design**: The platform aims to update medical countermeasures in real time, solving the asymmetry problem where pathogens can be created faster than cures.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale software infrastructure** for government and commercial biodefense stakeholders.
- **Expand engineering and research teams** – currently hiring for applied AI, forward deployed engineers, computational biologists, and operations roles.
- **Deepen partnerships** with government agencies and life sciences organizations to deploy the platform against emerging biological threats.
- **Lay groundwork for adaptive, precision therapeutics** beyond immediate biodefense applications.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: Directly contribute to protecting humanity from biological threats – a high-impact, urgent problem.
- **Elite team environment**: Work alongside engineers and scientists from Palantir, DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
- **Strong backing and resources**: $30M seed funding from top-tier investors provides runway and stability.
- **In-office culture**: Valthos operates from a physical office in New York, NY, with an in-office expectation (as per Built In profile).
- **Growth opportunities**: Early-stage company with 8–10 employees and 12+ open roles – new hires will shape the company’s technical and operational direction.
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but typical early-stage startup benefits (equity, competitive comp) likely apply. Emphasis on engineering and biotech talent.

## Sources
1. [valthos.com](https://valthos.com/)
2. [valthos.com/blog/intro](https://valthos.com/blog/intro)
3. [LinkedIn – Valthos](https://www.linkedin.com/company/valthos)
4. [PRNewswire – Valthos Raises $30M](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valthos-raises-30m-from-openai-lux-capital-founders-fund-to-build-next-generation-biodefense-302598583.html)
5. [Built In – Valthos Careers](https://builtin.com/company/valthos)

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