Lead Platform Engineer

Description

About the Role

Lead the compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure behind a biotechnology sequencing operation. This hands-on technical leadership role connects laboratory systems with reliable cloud platforms and data workflows that support scientific work.

Responsibilities

• Own services that orchestrate laboratory devices, including robots, sequencers, and on-premises Linux servers, along with the data ingestion pipeline.
• Build cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to store, process, and deliver large volumes of sequencing data.
• Design reliable systems for orchestrating large-scale bioinformatics workloads, including queues, workflow orchestration, and scheduling.
• 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 architectural decisions to business impact.
• Contribute directly to implementation while mentoring engineers and communicating across scientific and engineering teams.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in platform, backend, or infrastructure engineering, including meaningful experience at a startup as it scaled.
• Strong AWS orchestration experience with ECS, Batch, and Step Functions, plus Python backend development using FastAPI or Django.
• Experience designing and shipping reliable distributed systems, including queues, orchestration, and state machines.
• Linux server administration experience and familiarity with distributed task queues such as Celery or SQS.
• Experience leading cross-functional projects and mentoring engineers on a small team, with a substantial hands-on individual contributor focus.
• Current familiarity with AI tooling; experience building LLM or agent systems, including tools, evaluation, safety, permissions, prompts, and workflows, is valuable.
• A technical degree or equivalent background, and curiosity about biotechnology, science, and scientific applications.

Conditions

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

Hybrid in South San Francisco, California, United States.