Forward Deployed Engineer at Novartis

About Forward Deployed Engineering at Novartis

The Strategy, Platforms \& Transformation team is dedicated to enabling improved decision\-making at Novartis by leveraging data and advanced analytics capabilities to generate actionable insights that drive business growth. We work within the US business, bringing insights and challenging ideas to empower smarter, data\-driven decision\-making. This role is crucial in driving AI transformation by bringing the best in AI and tech to unlock opportunities for growth and improve patient outcomes. The salary for this position is expected to range between $225,400\.00 and $418,600\.00 annual per year. The final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may change the published salary range based on company and market factors. Your compensation will include a performance\-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards. US\-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package th

Companies like Novartis typically structure FDE teams around a build-team model, where engineers join an existing customer engineering function and deploy the product across a portfolio of accounts. Based on FDE Pulse data across 259 active postings, 3% of FDE roles are build-team positions and 2% are "first hire" situations where the engineer defines the function. Novartis's 2 active postings fall into the first hire category based on role count.

FDE roles across the market are 3% North America-focused based on 259 active postings. 0% of FDE roles are classified as growth hires, meaning the company is expanding its customer base rather than backfilling an existing position. This context matters for FDE candidates evaluating Novartis: growth hire roles often come with more pressure to ramp quickly but also clearer performance metrics tied to customer success.

What FDEs Do at Novartis

Forward Deployed Engineers at Novartis own the technical success of customer deployments. This means designing integration architectures specific to each customer's infrastructure, writing and maintaining production code that runs in customer environments, and serving as the primary technical point of contact for enterprise accounts. The role sits at the intersection of product engineering and customer success without being either.

Day-to-day work for an FDE at Novartis varies by customer complexity and deployment stage. In the early phases of a new customer engagement, FDEs focus on environment setup, data mapping, and building the first integrations. As deployments mature, the work shifts toward performance tuning, expanding use cases, and training customer teams on new capabilities. Some FDE roles also feed product insights back to internal engineering, effectively acting as a bridge between customer needs and the roadmap.

Career Path for FDEs at Novartis

FDE careers typically progress along one of three paths: deepening technical specialization within the FDE function (moving from mid-level to senior to staff FDE), transitioning into engineering management (leading FDE teams or broader customer engineering organizations), or lateral moves into product management (where customer-facing FDE experience is highly valued). All three paths are available at companies with established FDE programs.

The FDE market median of $180,000 base salary across 134 active postings reflects a market that prices the role at a premium over equivalent-seniority software engineers at the same companies. Total compensation including equity, particularly at venture-backed companies, can be 20 to 50 percent higher than base salary. FDEs considering opportunities at Novartis should evaluate total compensation, not just base salary, when comparing offers.

Interview processes for FDE roles at most companies include a technical coding round, a system design round specific to customer deployment scenarios, and a customer scenario exercise where candidates are asked to scope a deployment, communicate trade-offs, and handle technical objections. Strong candidates combine engineering depth with the ability to explain complex systems to non-technical stakeholders clearly and without jargon.

Frequently Asked Questions