Forward Deployed Engineer

About Leucine and Celestara

12 of the top 15 generic pharma companies in the world trust Leucine to manufacture the drugs that reach millions of patients every day.

Leucine builds AI-powered software that helps pharmaceutical manufacturers stay compliant, audit-ready and productive, so medicines reach patients faster. Manufacturing, QA and QC teams use Leucine across thousands of regulated workflows, from material receipt to batch release, for small molecules, biologics, vaccines and more.

Celestara is our platform for building and running those solutions: data pipelines, agnotology that models the customer's operations, agentic workflows and applications on top.

About the role

You will sit with our customers, understand how their work really gets done, and turn their highest-value problems into live solutions on Celestara. You own each use case end to end: from discovery and business case, through design and build, to UAT, go-live in production, and then its adoption, maintenance and ongoing iteration.

This is a hybrid role. Think product manager, solution architect and hands-on builder in one person, working inside the customer's four walls rather than from a distance. Most of our customers are in pharma, but you do not need prior pharma experience. We care far more about curiosity, empathy for users and the ability to learn a new domain fast.

Location - India and United States, deployed on-site at customer locations

What you'll do

1. Understand the problem

• Embed with customer teams on the shop floor, in QA/QC labs and in offices; shadow users and learn how work actually happens.
• Run discovery workshops and interviews; build empathy for users' pain points, constraints and incentives.
• Produce clear as-is process maps: steps, roles, hand-offs, systems, data sources and where time, cost and errors pile up.

2. Build the business case

• Run ROI assessments: baseline current effort, cycle time, error and rework rates, and quantify the value of the future state.
• Prioritise use cases with the customer by value, feasibility and time to impact.

3. Reimagine the solution on Celestara

• Design the to-be process and solution in the context of the platform, not as a one-off workaround.
• Translate requirements into a solution design: data sources and transformation pipelines, ontology and data model, agentic workflows, application screens and user journeys, integrations and access controls.
• Write crisp specs and user stories; make trade-offs and say no when scope does not serve the outcome.

4. Deliver from UAT to production

• Configure and build on Celestara, hands-on, working with our product and engineering teams for anything new.
• Plan and run UAT with customer users; triage feedback, fix issues and drive sign-off.
• Lead go-live, hypercare and adoption; measure the outcomes against the ROI baseline.
• Support validation and documentation needed in a regulated environment, with help from our domain experts.

5. Own the use case after go-live

• Drive adoption: train users, track usage and close the gaps that stop people from relying on the solution.
• Maintain the use case in production: monitor pipelines, workflows and agents, resolve issues and manage changes under the customer's change-control process.
• Iterate continuously: gather feedback, measure impact against the ROI baseline and ship improvements release after release.

6. Be the voice of the customer

• Feed field insights back to product: patterns across customers, gaps in the platform, ideas for reusable components and templates.
• Build trusted relationships with users, process owners and senior stakeholders; identify the next use cases to expand into.

Requirements

What we're looking for

Customer and problem obsession. You listen first, ask sharp questions and can explain a user's problem better than they can.

Product thinking. Experience as a product manager, solutions consultant, business analyst or similar; you can go from a messy problem to a prioritised, well-specified solution.

Process and value analysis. You have done as-is/to-be process mapping and can build a credible ROI or business case with real numbers.

Technical fluency. You already understand, or can quickly learn, how modern data and AI platforms fit together:

• data integration, transformation and pipelines (ETL/ELT)
• data modelling and ontologies (entities, relationships, semantics)
• agentic and LLM-powered workflows, automation and orchestration
• application design: user journeys, screens, roles and permissions
• APIs and enterprise system integration

Hands-on builder. Comfortable configuring a platform, writing SQL, and scripting (e.g. Python) to get things working; you do not wait for someone else to build.

Delivery ownership. You have taken work through UAT and into production and stayed accountable for adoption and outcomes.

Communication. Clear written and verbal English; equally at ease with an operator on the floor and a VP in a steering committee.

Ready to be on the ground. Willing to be deployed at customer sites in India or the US and travel as needed.

Fast learner. Comfortable picking up a complex, regulated domain like pharma manufacturing and quality. No prior pharma knowledge required.

Nice to have

• Experience as a forward deployed engineer, solutions engineer or implementation lead at an enterprise SaaS, data or AI platform company.
• Exposure to platforms built on ontologies or semantic layers, or to low-code/no-code application builders.
• Hands-on work with LLMs, prompt design, RAG or agent frameworks.
• Background in manufacturing, life sciences, quality or other regulated industries (GxP, 21 CFR Part 11, CSV/CSA).
• An engineering, computer science, data or operations degree, or equivalent experience.
• 3-8 years experience (indicative; strong builders with less are welcome)

Benefits

What success looks like

• By 30 days - Learned Celestara hands-on, shadowed a live deployment and grasped the basics of pharma manufacturing and quality workflows.
• By 90 days - Owned discovery for a customer use case: as-is map, ROI case and a Celestara solution design the customer has signed off.
• By 180 - days Taken at least one use case through UAT into production, with measurable adoption and impact, and identified the next use cases with that customer.

Why join

• Real impact. Your work helps medicines get made right and reach patients faster. Ownership. You own outcomes, not tickets, with direct access to customers, product and leadership.
• Breadth. Product, data, AI and operations in one role; a fast track into product leadership, solution architecture or customer leadership.
• Frontier tech in the real world. Put agentic AI and ontology-driven applications into production in one of the most demanding industries

Other Benefits

• Market leading compensation + uncapped variable
• Opportunity for fast-track growth & leadership
• Work with a purpose-driven, global team transforming an essential industry
• Comprehensive Health Insurance with industry-leading coverage for your peace of mind.
• Complimentary Meals & Refreshments: Stay energized with unlimited breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner provided at the office.
• Family-Friendly Leave Policies, including Paternity Leave and Compassionate Leave, to support you through life's important moments.