Lead Platform Engineer

About the Role

Lead the compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure behind a biotechnology sequencing operation. This hands-on technical leadership role combines platform engineering with close collaboration across engineering and scientific teams to support reliable lab operations and large-scale data processing.

What You'll Do

• Own services that orchestrate lab devices, including robotics, sequencers, and on-premises Linux servers, along with the data ingestion pipeline.

• Build cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to store, process, and deliver terabytes of sequencing data.

• Design queues, workflow orchestration, and scheduling systems to coordinate millions of bioinformatics tasks.

• Develop AI infrastructure and internal tools for operational quality monitoring, logistics coordination, and adaptive bioinformatics analysis.

• Lead cross-functional projects from problem definition through production, connecting architecture choices to business impact.

• Contribute directly to engineering work while mentoring teammates and communicating clearly across disciplines.

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years of platform, backend, or infrastructure engineering experience, including impactful work at a startup during a period of growth.

• Strong AWS orchestration experience, especially ECS, Batch, and Step Functions, plus Python backend development with FastAPI or Django.

• Production experience designing reliable distributed systems, including queues, orchestration, and state machines.

• Experience with Linux server administration and distributed task queues such as Celery or SQS.

• Ability to lead projects and mentor engineers on a small team, with substantial hands-on individual-contributor work.

• Experience building LLM or agent systems, including tooling, evaluation, safety and permissions, and prompt and workflow design; familiarity with current AI tools.

• A technical degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or physics, or equivalent background, and curiosity about biotech and scientific work.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $205,000 to $235,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

Hybrid role based in South San Francisco, California.