Staff/ Principal Software Engineer, Scientific System of Record
Hybrid (Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA)$204k - $310kfull-timePosted 7mo ago
About the role
Technical leadership role building AI-driven scientific platform, shaping architecture for interfaces, services, APIs, databases, and lab execution systems that integrate AI frameworks with scientific analytics and workflows.
Responsibilities
- Define architectural direction for the AI Lab Execution System and related SSR capabilities.
- Design systems modeling scientific intent, experiment planning, protocol execution, sample/asset state, events, and results across complex lab workflows.
- Lead design of high-performance, secure UIs and APIs for scientists, automation systems, ML workflows, and AI-driven applications.
- Establish durable domain models, schemas, and data contracts across SQL, NoSQL, vector databases, data lakehouses, and other scientific data systems.
- Set technical standards for high availability, low latency, observability, fault tolerance, and operational excellence.
- Guide cloud and infrastructure use (AWS, Kubernetes, DevOps practices) for production-grade scaling.
- Partner with scientists, ML researchers, platform/data engineers, automation and product leaders to translate needs into platform architecture.
- Mentor engineers, drive architecture reviews, raise quality, and establish patterns/tools that improve velocity and quality.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
- 8-15 years of engineering experience building and deploying large-scale production systems; strong in either front-end or backend.
- Expertise in at least one of front-end, backend, or data modeling/system design with ability to reason across all three.
- Strong TypeScript, React, and Python experience (Python strongly preferred).
- Experience in systems and data architecture: scalable architectures, APIs, domain models, schemas, data contracts, distributed data systems.
- Experience with SQL and at least one NoSQL, vector DB, graph DB, search systems, or data lakehouse architectures.
- Experience designing APIs, platform abstractions, and integration patterns.
- Experience in life sciences, materials science, ML platforms, laboratory systems, automation platforms, or other data-intensive environments.
- Operational excellence: observability, incident response, performance tuning, long-term maintainability.
- Technical leadership: mentoring, stakeholder alignment, driving complex initiatives from ambiguity to production.
- Strong communication and collaboration, able to explain complex ideas to diverse audiences.
- Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants or AI-augmented engineering workflows.
Skills
Required:Architectural designFront-end engineeringBack-end engineeringData modelingAPI design
Benefits
- Full-time benefits including medical, dental, vision; employer-paid life and disability; flexible PTO and company holidays; parental leave; educational assistance; commuter benefits; subsidized lunch; regional international benefits.
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Lila Sciences
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.
Scientific SuperintelligenceAIAutonomous LabsLife SciencesChemical SciencesMaterials Sciences
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