Full-Time

Forward Deployed Engineer

Collate

Collate

11-50 employees

AI-driven documentation automation for life sciences

Compensation Overview

$150k - $300k/yr

San Francisco, CA, USA

In Person

Category
Software Engineering
Required Skills
LLM

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Requirements
  • You have owned customer-facing AI deployments end-to-end—from scoping through production adoption—and can point to shipped systems that drove measurable workflow impact.
  • You have a 0-to-1 build track record.
  • You have hands-on production AI experience: prompt engineering, agent development, evaluation frameworks, and deployment at scale—not just familiarity with the landscape.
  • You have operated as a senior engineer or tech lead trusted to make technical decisions in ambiguous environments—without needing a defined spec or a clear path.
  • You communicate clearly across every altitude—as comfortable in a strategic discussion with a CTO as you are deep in a codebase, and able to translate tradeoffs into decisions for non-technical stakeholders.
Responsibilities
  • Lead end-to-end deployments of Collate’s AI systems inside life sciences organizations—owning scoping, build, and production rollout from first conversation to measurable workflow impact.
  • Go deep before you write a line of code. Embed with customer teams—medical writers, regulatory affairs, clinical ops—to understand what’s structurally broken, where the highest concentration of unsolved value lives, and what’s actually buildable.
  • Design and ship production AI systems—document generation agents, agentic workflows, data pipelines—that integrate with customers’ existing infrastructure and regulatory environments.
  • Define and run eval loops that measure system quality against workflow-specific benchmarks—acceptance criteria, output accuracy, reviewer expectations—and use that signal to improve deployed systems over time.
  • Turn early wins into repeatable patterns. The best of what you build ships to every Collate customer. What you discover in the field directly shapes what gets built next—you’re a core feedback loop between customers and the product team.
  • Communicate across every altitude. Translate technical tradeoffs into decisions and operating procedures for scientific, regulatory, and executive audiences—and bring that clarity back to Collate’s engineering and product teams.
Desired Qualifications
  • Bonus: you have context in life sciences, regulated industries, or document-heavy workflows—and understand what it means to build for auditability, compliance, and high-stakes review cycles.
  • You think like a founder. When you walk into a customer, you’re curious about the business, digging into what’s broken, and figuring out what to build that doesn’t yet exist. You’re scrappy, resourceful, and want to do it at a higher level of ambition.

Collate provides an AI-powered platform that automates the creation and management of documentation for drug development, medical devices, and diagnostics. It works by generating, organizing, and governing regulatory and quality documents while offering data discovery and governance tools to ensure high-quality data assets. It distinguishes itself by offering an end-to-end, life-sciences–focused solution that covers drug, device, and diagnostic workflows in one platform, reducing manual work and speeding up approvals. Its goal is to shorten development and regulatory timelines so researchers can focus on discovery and bring life-saving innovations to patients faster.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Series B

Total Funding

$125M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2025

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Collate raised $95 million on June 3, 2026, signaling strong investor conviction.
  • Roughly 50 customers since May 2025 prove urgent demand from pharma and medtech.
  • Collate 2.0 launched June 10, 2026, expanding AI-native enterprise data workflows.

What critics are saying

  • Regulatory mistakes in 2026 filings can trigger FDA rejection and customer churn.
  • OpenMetadata distraction risks product focus while Databricks and Veeva attack adjacent workflows.
  • A $1 billion valuation leaves little margin if 2026 enterprise renewals slow.

What makes Collate unique

  • Surbhi Sarna and Nate Smith bring proven exits from Boston Scientific and Lever.
  • Collate combines GxP-compliant AI with human verification for audit-ready life-sciences documents.
  • OpenMetadata roots plus Collate 2.0 give enterprise data-context depth competitors lack.

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Benefits

Company Equity

Flexible Work Hours

Professional Development Budget

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

28%

1 year growth

28%

2 year growth

0%
CNBC
Jul 9th, 2026
Collate CEO Surbhi Sarna on AI software automating life-sciences documentation for drug approvals

Surbhi Sarna, CEO and founder of Collate, discussed her company's AI-native software that automates documentation for life-sciences companies bringing drugs and devices to market. The GxP-compliant platform maintains human oversight for audits. Sarna's journey into healthcare technology began as a teenager when she was hospitalised with debilitating ovarian cysts, facing uncertainty about whether she had cancer. This experience motivated her to found nVision Medical, which was later acquired by Boston Scientific. Collate addresses the extensive documentation requirements in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, streamlining regulatory compliance processes whilst ensuring proper human verification remains in place.

Forbes
Jun 3rd, 2026
AI startup Collate raises $95M to automate life sciences paperwork at near-$1B valuation

AI startup Collate has raised $95 million in a Series C round led by Redpoint Ventures, valuing the company at nearly $1 billion. The funding brings total capital raised to $125 million since the San Francisco-based company emerged from stealth 17 months ago. Founded by two-time entrepreneur and former Y Combinator partner Surbhi Sarna, Collate automates paperwork for life sciences companies, including regulatory filings and clinical trial documentation. The startup has signed approximately 50 customers since May 2025, including major pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers. Collate's AI tools deliver time savings of 50% to 90% on documents that previously took months to complete, whilst maintaining accuracy above 90%. The company requires human verification before documents are exported to ensure patient safety.

American Bazaar, Inc.
Jan 21st, 2025
Collate secures $30M to automate paperwork

Biotech startup Collate, founded by Surbhi Sarna, has secured a $30 million seed fund to automate paperwork in the life sciences industry using AI. The funding round was led by Redpoint, with participation from First Round, Conviction Partners, and YC, valuing Collate at over $100 million. Collate aims to streamline documentation for diagnostic, medical device, and drug development companies, enhancing R&D and reducing time to market. Co-founders Nate Smith and Jigish Patel bring additional expertise.

Forbes
Jan 13th, 2025
This YC Partner Just Raised $30 Million For An AI Startup Automating Paperwork For Biotech

Y Combinator's Surbhi Sarna has raised $30 million for Collate, a startup aiming to automate the tedious parts of running a life sciences business using AI.