Senior Software Engineer, Backend
Lila Sciences is seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer with a backend focus to join our software platform team. In this role, you will collaborate with software engineers, lab scientists, and machine learning engineers to develop cutting-edge tools for automated scientific analysis. This position emphasizes Python development for scientific applications within a dynamic and collaborative environment.
Key responsibilities include designing and building high-performance, secure, and well-documented code that integrates with existing services and applications. You will diagnose and optimize system bottlenecks to ensure high availability and low-latency performance across large-scale workloads. Additionally, leveraging AWS services, Kubernetes, and modern DevOps practices, you will build and deploy production-grade systems at scale. Collaboration with machine learning researchers, engineers, and scientists to integrate data pipelines, APIs, and cloud infrastructure into scientific workflows is also a critical aspect of this role.
The ideal candidate will possess a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, along with 4-8 years of experience writing software in a commercial setting. Experience in full-stack development, including React, TypeScript, monorepos like Nx, Tailwind, FastAPI, SQL/NoSQL, Python, and Pydantic, is essential. Hands-on experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, as well as a strong understanding of Kubernetes, containerization, infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or CloudFormation, and CI/CD pipelines like GitHub Actions, is required. Excellent communication and collaboration skills, along with a proven track record of working cross-functionally with scientists, data engineers, and product teams, are also necessary.
We offer competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity. Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program, including medical, dental, and vision coverage; employer-paid life and disability insurance; flexible time off with generous company-wide holidays; paid parental leave; an educational assistance program; commuter benefits, including bike share memberships for office-based employees; and a company-subsidized lunch program. The expected base salary range for this position is $144,000 - $210,000 USD.
Lila Sciences is building Scientific Superintelligence™ to solve humankind's greatest challenges. We believe science is the most inspiring frontier for AI. Rather than hard-coding expert knowledge into tools, LILA builds systems that can learn for themselves. LILA combines advanced AI models with proprietary AI Science Factory™ instruments into an operating system for science that executes the entire scientific method autonomously, accelerating discovery at unprecedented speed, scale, and impact across medicine, materials, and energy. Guided by our core values of truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity, we move with startup speed while tackling problems of historic importance. If this sounds like an environment you'd love to work in, even if you don't meet every qualification listed above, we encourage you to apply.