Agilisium plans to train 700+ forward-deployment experts next year, hiring doctors and pharmacists ahead of CS grads

Chennai-based Agilisium, which builds and deploys AI for pharmaceutical companies, is overhauling how it hires. Founder and CEO Raj Babu told journalists on October 12 that he wants computer science graduates to make up less than 30% of new recruits. The company is bringing in people from biotechnology, microbiology, pharmacy and medicine, including MBBS doctors, dentists and PhDs, and teaching them to build software with AI.

The hiring push feeds Agilisium's forward-deployment expert (FDE) model, which combines domain knowledge with technical skills and consultative problem-solving, with staff working directly with clients. Training runs about four months of formal instruction plus three to six months hands-on. Close to 100 of its roughly 1,400 employees have been trained as FDEs so far, and the target is more than 700 next year, helped by an AI training platform with workflow-specific modules such as clinical-trial validation. The company says it works with Anthropic's Claude, AWS and Databricks, and targets $100M in revenue next year.

Why it matters for FDEs: this is a different take on the role. Most FDE job ads start from engineering and add customer skills. Agilisium starts from domain expertise and adds AI-assisted building. If that works in regulated life sciences work, expect more vertical firms to open FDE-style roles to domain specialists who can code with AI tools, and engineers who want those roles to need real industry depth.