Lead Platform Engineer

About the Role

Lead platform engineering for the compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure behind a biotechnology sequencing operation. You will combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership to build reliable systems that support lab operations and scientific data processing.

What You'll Do

• Own services that orchestrate lab devices, including robots, sequencers, and on-premises Linux servers, as well as the data ingestion pipeline.

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

• Design reliable orchestration and scheduling systems for large-scale bioinformatics workloads using queues, workflows, and state machines.

• Build AI infrastructure and internal tools for agentic systems that monitor quality, coordinate logistics, and support adaptive bioinformatics analysis.

• Lead cross-functional projects from problem definition through production, connecting architectural decisions to operational and business outcomes.

• Mentor teammates and contribute directly to platform and backend engineering work.

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years of experience in platform, backend, or infrastructure engineering, with a strong individual-contributor focus.

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

• Experience administering Linux servers and building production distributed systems, including task queues such as Celery or SQS.

• Experience scaling systems in a fast-growing startup environment and owning systems over time.

• Proven technical leadership, including cross-functional project leadership and experience mentoring or managing engineers.

• Experience building LLM or agent systems, including tooling, evaluation, permissions, prompts, and workflows.

• A technical degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or physics, or equivalent experience, and curiosity about biotechnology or scientific domains.

Compensation & Benefits

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

Location

Hybrid in South San Francisco, California.