About the role

We are looking for a Forward Deployed Scientist with 1–2+ years of post-PhD industry experience to embed with enterprise biotech and pharma customers, elevate the scientific rigor of Phylo's AI agents, and translate real-world scientific workflows into product improvements. This is a rare hybrid role at the intersection of cutting-edge agentic AI and drug R&D — you'll be both a scientist and a builder, working directly with some of the world's top researchers to deploy AI that accelerates biomedical discovery.

What will you be doing?

Partner with top pharma and biotech customers to understand their scientific workflows, scope solutions, and drive adoption of Phylo's AI agents at the scientist level.
Build and curate biomedical skills, tools, and data integrations that power the agents — generating high-quality, scientifically rigorous AI workflows.
Design and run evaluation pipelines and benchmarks to measure agent performance across biomedical domains.
Run training sessions and office hours for enterprise customers; serve as the scientific voice in deployments and feedback loops.
Feed customer insights directly back to the product and engineering teams to continuously raise the scientific bar of the platform.

Key Requirements

PhD (or MD/PhD) in a relevant biomedical or computational field — strongly preferred; exceptional industry experience may substitute.
1–2+ years of industry experience at a top pharma, biotech, CRO, or life sciences consulting firm (e.g. ZS, LEK) in a scientific or computational role.
Deep expertise in at least one stage of the drug R&D pipeline: discovery (medicinal chemistry, hit-to-lead, SAR, protein design), IND-enabling (tox, DMPK, PK/PD), or clinical/translational (biomarkers, RWD, Phase 1/2).

Phylo is an applied research lab building agentic intelligence to accelerate discovery for every biomedical scientist. Founded by Stanford PhD researchers who built the first biology agent (CRISPR-GPT) and the first general-purpose biomedical agent (Biomni), Phylo is pioneering the next generation of AI systems for the life sciences.

The company believes AI agents will fundamentally transform how biomedical research is done, enabling faster and more systematic scientific progress. Phylo's platform is already used by thousands of organizations globally, including ~20 enterprise accounts across top-20 pharma and large biotech companies, with scientists like Feng Zhang actively utilizing the system.

Backed by a $13.5M seed round led by a16z, Menlo Ventures, and Anthropic, and advised by Nobel Prize laureates and pioneering biologists including Feng Zhang, Caroline Bartoszek, and Fabian Theis, Phylo brings together world-class researchers and engineers across AI and biology. Scientific co-founders include Yuri Leskovec and Le Cong, pioneers in AI and CRISPR respectively.

Phylo operates with a culture of excellence and speed — the team moves fast, thinks big, and supports each other. As an early-stage company with a flat organizational structure, every team member has outsized impact on the product and mission to 100X biomedical discoveries through AI.

Member of Technical Staff - Forward Deployed Scientist

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